The Bellerophon Baty Engine Heist
by Chris Kenworthy
Summary: To steal a portable fusion engine design that they can sell to Badger, Simon and Kaylee go undercover at a scientific conference. The only problem is, their cover personas are married! Can they keep up the charade long enough to get the loot?
1. Chapter 1

There was a lot of celebration aboard Serenity after Mal and Inara brought the Lassiter on with them, and Wash pulled up from that barren, desert patch of Bellerophon. After all, they had gotten away with what Yolanda-Saffron-Bridget described as 'the million-square job', managed to outwit that devious con girl and leave her trapped in the dumpster, and even Mal's stripped nudity quickly developed into a festive joke. (Though he did take the first opportunity to slip down into his quarters and find some spare clothes to restore a bit of captainly dignity with.)

Kaylee had organized an impromptu celebration of their success in the kitchen, but just when they got to the protein cake, Wash called back down. "Wave for you, Captain no-pants. It's our favourite small gnawing critter, from Persephone."

"What does Badger want with us now?" Zoe exclaimed.

"How'd he even route to us here?" Simon chimed in. "Thought we were off the matrix, for jobs like this."

"We are," Mal agreed emphatically. "But Badger does have his own ways, and I haven't managed to learn but a few of them." He considered, looking around slightly. "Guess I'll take it in my quarters."

"You don't want us here?" Simon asked.

"If Badger asks to talk to me, then he has his own reasons for wanting it private," Mal told the doctor, wondering why he bothered. "Else he would a said he wanted to address the crew. Burned enough bridges with them as is willing to pay for our services lately, I don't exactly want to piss the Badge off today."

By the time he'd finished with that speech, Mal was already into the forward crew passage, and from there, it took but a few moments to get down into his own bunk, and turn the cortex screen on. "What can I do you for?"

Badger smiled one of those incredibly gap-toothed smiles, and Mal fought a trace of an urge to shudder. "First off, I understand that congratulations are in order, Mal."

How does he **know** things so quickly, Mal wondered. Well, maybe playing dumb would help establish just how much information had reached Persephone. "Congratulations for what, exactly?"

"Oh, come on now, don't be coy with me. I've heard about the Lassiter job, and when I find your little horsefly leaving the surface of Bellerophon, hear that a certain dirty but lovely young lady was apprehended in a garbage dump of self-same world, and discretely check with the estate of on Durran Haymer to learn that yes, they've just had a theft, and the priceless valuables have not been recovered - it doesn't take much to add things up."

"Hmm... no, I suppose not," Mal had to admit. "So you know the girl in question well?" The realization struck him instantly, and Mal couldn't help but laugh. "She wedded up to you too, didn't she?"

"It does seem to be a favourite mode of operation. Yes, I will admit that I had my espousal day." Badger chuckled. "I also have something of hers that not many of her husbands can boast of."

"Really?" Mal smiled, enjoying this back and forth more than he'd ever have expected. "And just what is that?"

"It would be a signed writ of divorce. Probably not legal, but then, neither is the marriage certificate, not unless her real name is Brittany Wilkinson. Never mind that, though. I wonder how quickly she'll be able to get out of legal custody this time."

"Is this all that you called to talk to me about?" Mal asked, his patience running low now that the big surprise seemed to have run out. And then he thought of something. "Are you looking to move the Lassiter for us?"

"No, no, not about to touch that one. That's the big reason I didn't lend Brittany one of my crews - well, that, and not trusting her further than I could hold to her. Most of the fences who might try dealing in something like that are - well, not to put too fine a point, those are circles I want to be moving in, and sending the message that I can't deal with it myself would show them that I'm not worthy. Better to just ignore the thing completely."

"Oh, well, that's a shame," Mal muttered, wondering why Badger admitted such a thing to him. Was this the little man's way of buttering him up for a different favour?

"Yes. Best person to handle the Lassiter would probably be Niska, but then, you've burnt all your bridges there."

"Any bridge of Adelei Niska leads somewhere that I don't want to go," Mal said automatically.

"Well, in any event, on to business," Badger said with a decisive nod. "Realize that it might be a bit awkward to continue hanging around Bellerophon, but I do have a heist of mine own that I'd like to pull off, around there. No particular plan, but I know how you love to arrange such things yourself, and I have a considerable amount of data prepared about the target. Seems right up your motley crew's alley, and I want this taken care of well."

"Send along the data, and we'll see if we can work it," Mal agreed equably. From what Badger had said, the Lassiter might be a valuable bird in the hand, but that wasn't worth a smaller and cheaper one already sold off. "What's the headlines version?"

"You're familiar with the Baty Power engine, of course?" Badger said. Mal was. It was a clean electrical generator that ran off water, (not necessarily pure,) and exhausted decent air with a touch of helium as it burned. Most important, it was so small and sturdy that it could be carried on a donkey cart, or even by a man in an oversize wheelbarrow. The Alliance kept the supply of Baty generators limited to approved and loyal citizens - of course, some inevitably got stolen once they were in use, but nobody had ever managed to steal their secrets, mostly because the moulded case was almost impervious to attack, and if you managed to get through that, the internal workings were trashed by that point. Back during the war, the use of Baty generators by Alliance troops had been one of the key tipping factors, in Mal's own opinion. That was about as much as he knew, and briefly he told Badger so.

"Alright, that's good enough for a beginning. There's a brilliant Alliance physicist, by the name of Dee Bentley, who lives in the south of Bellerophon, on a garden valley estate. He's hosting a symposium in his gigantic mansion, with the objective of miniaturizing the Baty so that it could fit in a backpack. All kinds of scientist types showing up, mostly other physicists, physical chemists, and a few biologists and bio-radiologists, to make sure that whatever gets tried, it's safe to be around people. The Alliance has approved this little gathering, on the understanding that they keep the exclusive distribution rights of the micro-Baty, through the Blue Sun contract."

"And you want us to get into the conference and... do what, exactly?"

"Steal a Baty prototype that isn't locked up tight, of course," Badger answered easily. "There'll have to be several around, for experimental purposes. You should still be able to move it, carefully, and the instructions for that are in the data that I've just about finished sending. Get it to me, and leave it to my boys to crack the design. Then I've got a competing source to the Alliance monopoly - I'll be able to undercut them out on the rim without anybody realizing it for a while if I'm careful, and even after that, I should be able to compete in terms of price, and keep my supply lines hidden. It's a great product, Mal."

"What's our cut?" Mal said, with a laugh.

"No cutsies, dear, not this time. Nine hundred and fifty thousand in platinum is my price for a prototype, and that's a Senator's ransom, at least. What I make out of that once it's delivered is up to me."

"No deal," Mal dared. "If you get rich off this, then we get our piece of the pie too. And no sending any other independent contractors after it. This is up to my crew."

"Before you've even told me that you've figured out a plan, found an in?" Badger scoffed.

"We'll find it," Mal swore. "Count on it. But once we get the sample, I don't think you're the only one who'll be interested in it..."

"That's **my** intelligence, Reynolds," Badger muttered, his face growing furious.

"And I'm more than happy to deal exclusively with you, since you transmitted the data upfront, Badger; as long as you extend us the same courtesy. Some of the other crews you contract out to - they have a tendency to stir up the hornets."

Badger sighed. "Okay, I think that we can deal."

"That's music to my ears."

#

Eleven hours later by ship's time, Mal was seriously starting to wonder if he'd been over-enthusiastic in assuring Badger that they'd find a way to pull this job off. The information that the Dyton-born crime boss had sent over was quite comprehensive and thorough, but it had also included plenty of information on the extensive security precautions that were being taken for this conference, which seemed more than adequate to handle any armed robbery, surreptitious burglary, or obvious trickery that the crew of 'Serenity' might be able to manage easily. Falsifying identification also seemed to be infeasible, since this conference was a one-time affair, with Bentley handling the passes and invitations himself.

It all came down to one thing. If the heist was going to work, it would have to be a genuine inside job - and they had no possible 'ins.' There was just no overlap between the crew of Serenity and the list of attendees - their circles were much too widely separated. Even Simon could not claim to have met anybody on the guest list, though he did recognize several names from his studies, or social life back on Osiris.

Everybody was eager to get a new 'big score', though, (well, except perhaps Book, who tolerated the life of crime as reluctantly as ever,) and it was Inara who got the first 'break in the case.' Mal hadn't been eager to let her join in again, but she had insisted on the basis of her 'save' of the Lassiter. "Okay, I managed to get Bentley's cortex address, through a friend of a friend, and I think that I might be able to talk him into a pair of general invitations, for myself and one - client. But they'd be the most restricted type of observer passes, which won't give us that many opportunities. We'd be on-site, but still not to get into the experimentation zones unobserved or anything like that."

"Yeah, I would tend to agree that something like this will play a supporting role, no more," Zoe agreed uncertainly. "We need to get someone deeper in, as well. Who would you pick as your client? Can we manufacture a back-story for him?"

"Yes, and we'll need to scramble to make it something that will pass a cursory background check," Inara said. "Umm... let's see... mister Tam?"

"Me?" Simon muttered. "You want me to play a cover again? I kind of bombed on Higgins' moon, remember."

"Yes, but you did much better on Ariel," Kaylee insisted, always eager to compliment the handsome doctor. "And this seems a bit more like a Core world, even if technically it's on the border. You'll have some time to prepare, and you'll do fine."

"Hmm..." Simon muttered. "Yes, I'll be available."

"Well, we can start laying the groundwork, but nothing that we can't reverse," Mal advised. "You never know."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Zoe put in. "You want to be the one to escort Inara? She made her choice."

"Until we have the rest of the plan, we don't know if Simon will be needed somewhere else," River pointed out. "He might need to be a supporting player somewhere else, with his medical skills - or he just might be the deep-inside guy."

"What?" Simon exclaimed, startled. Kaylee got a thoughtful look on her face and started to skim through one of the files again.

"In the meantime, how are we going to stay clear of the Feds, Mal?" Inara asked.

"Nobody's looking for us, not yet. I don't think that Yo-Saff-Bridge has given us up, and even if she does, the authorities might not likely believe her. Yeah, the Lassiter wasn't found in the dumpster with her, but there are other ways to explain that. It might have gone to the wrong trash collection depot, or dropped off on the way."

"And Wash is doing his usual magic at the controls," Zoe said loyally. "Even if the Alliance is looking, they won't likely find us."

Inara nodded serenely in response. The meeting broke up around that point, everyone heading off to different parts of the ship, except for Kaylee, who stayed at the table in the lounge, continuing to pore over the files.

#

Book was leaning against the door of the bridge, as Wash sat back in the pilot's chair, checking on Serenity's orbit and the other ships that might be near her every so often. For a long time, neither of them said anything, just comfortable there in silence, and then Wash looked up at his quiet companion and said, "So, how does our current little crime spree strike you, Shepherd?"

Book smiled a bit wanly. "I try not to get too judgmental since I've been riding on this ship. For one thing, although the bible may say 'thou shall not steal', it's hard to read those words in context and not realize that our concept of property has gotten a lot muddier than it was when those words were first written. Taking your neighbour's cow, that he needs for milk, because you feel like having a steak? Not only is that morally repugnant, it's not good herdsmanship or stewardship." Wash chuckled appreciatively. "Swiping something like this Lassiter, which was probably stolen goods more than once already, and not the rightful inheritance of any man living in the 'Verse?" Book sighed heavily. "It's not a moral wrong, but then, I'm not sure that going after this kind of work is really healthy behaviour either, especially for Malcolm."

"You haven't been around much," Wash suddenly decided. "You helped move the cargo from that smuggling run, the one where Mal bumped into Bridget again, and I think somebody mentioned that you helped haul Jayne in again after he'd hurt himself, but aside from that..."

"No, you're right, I've been spending a lot of time by myself," Book admitted. "It's a sort of a spiritual thing, called the Walk of Searching. I didn't try to hold to it as strictly as some of my brothers in holy orders do, but as much as you can, for a period of seven days, you're supposed to meditate and read, and very little else. I helped out when it was obviously important, and I made it to dinner with the rest of the ship's company more times than I excused myself, but aside from that I was in my room."

"Hmm... interesting," Wash said after a moment. "Did you find any great truth as you searched?"

"No, I can't say that I came up with anything truly profound," the man of God admitted.

"What were you reading?"

"Oh, my path included many good books. Some of them were definitely... theological - the bible, and the Talmud, and Kojiki and Qur'an. Then there came commentaries, and written meditations, and debates; also a novella by Jolen Sheris, which I found a very interesting study of the paradox of trying to hold onto faith in a largely secular universe." Wash smiled slightly at that, and nodded silently. "If... if you don't mind my asking, have you had much involvement with organized faith yourself? I wouldn't really ask, except - well, you do seem to be curious about my faith tonight, so I thought I could return the interest."

"No, that's fine," Wash said. "Well, I grew up on a farm actually, not too far from the big city on Beaumonde, and... going to church was something that our family did, but I always got the feeling that it was never as much about God and figuring out how to live your life right, than a chance to meet up with the neighbours each week, and identifying ourselves as better than the folks who didn't attend, and gossiping about anybody who was doing something different from everybody else. By the time I was sixteen, I didn't want to have much to do with it, and I didn't care what my parents said about me when I told them so." He shrugged. "On the other hand, my last real experience with church was my wedding, and that was definitely a great memory, so I'm a little conflicted about the whole thing overall. Sorry."

"There's nothing to apologize for," Book said mildly. "I asked, and that was a clear answer. It does... sadden me that you've seen such a flawed side of the church... but the body of Christ is yet of this imperfect universe, and flawed as all mortal man. Those who are true of heart will strive for the glory of the Lord, but fail all too often, and there are many who wear the sheep's clothing and yet have no true love of God in their heart." He stopped abruptly, and then shrugged.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Maybe I'll go and see if there's anything at all appetizing in the kitchen," Book said, stepping back towards the door. "I haven't been eating that much over the past few days."

"Good luck," Wash said. "I... I think I'd like to continue this later, after I've had a chance to think some things over."

"You'll know where to find me, I think."

"Yes I will."

#

Back in the infirmary, Jayne was still laid up in traction, because Simon said that he had to let his spine rest to avoid the possibility of further damage. Inara knocked politely on the door and waited for a response.

"Hello, companion," he mumbled sourly. "If you're going to come in and try keeping me company for a spell, then come."

"All right," Inara said, crossing over to the bed on which the fierce gunman laid, a slight trace of a smile crossing her lips. "Are we feeling a little abandoned lately? Or is it the reverse, too much attention?"

"Neither, I suppose," Jayne muttered wryly. "Simon checks on my poor self every hour or better, Kaylee and the preacher have been by, and the Cap 'n' Zoe both made a point of telling me about this new offer of the Badger's. Any more fussing and I'd be telling people to knock it off and leave me 'lone. But..." He took a long breath before continuing, mindful of Simon's orders not to let his chest move too much while breathing. "I don't do well with this sort of thing. Being sick, or gettin' hurt - the kind of hurt where I can't just keep it heroically to my own self until it recovers naturally, at least. So I'm pretty much impossible to please just at the moment." And then, his face changing mercurially, Jayne shot a very lascivious look at Inara. "Not that I'd be that opposed to you trying' to **cheer me up**, if you know what I mean."

"We always know what you mean, Jayne," Inara said with her best dry tone. "You're not exactly a master of subtlety... which is possibly the only reason anyone on this ship has the slightest fondness for you, your simple forthrightness. As far as that particular suggestion goes -" She paused for a long moment before settling on the single word "No."

"Eh well," Jayne was about to shrug, and then remembered that he wasn't supposed to, and grumbled about it under his breath. "Is there any word about this new heist?"

"Not really, I came up with something that might be a piece of a plan, but far from the whole thing. Nobody's sure where to look anymore, except maybe Kaylee. She was still poring intently through the files when I left her."

"Okay," Jayne said. A silence stretched between them for seconds and seconds, and suddenly he blurted out, "I sold out Tam."

Inara pulled up a chair and raised an eyebrow. "First, to which Tam are you referring?"

"Well, both of them really, I suppose, but I meant it for the Doc."

"And - was this recent? Should we expect the Feds to come board us any minute to haul them away?"

Jayne laughed a few times. "Hey, c'mon, quit it, I don't think I should be doing that. No, this was back on Ariel."

"Oh, I see." Inara had been getting her Guild medical check-up while the rest of the crew had robbed a different hospital on Ariel, but she'd heard of how the caper had gone wrong, and the Tams, along with Jayne himself, had been captured by Feds. "Were they going to let you go later with the cash, or..."

"No, I got double-crossed, obviously," Jayne growled. "Can't trust the alliance snakes to even treat a weasel right. But the thing is - Simon cottoned to it, just now, and he... he said he still trusts me. What kind of sense does that make?"

"I'm not sure," Inara admitted. She suspected that there was more to the whole situation than Jayne had said yet, but didn't really want to get into further details, so... "Can I ask you just one question, Jayne Cobb?"

"For sure you can."

"If you're not even supposed to be laughing, what did you really think I could accomplish to 'cheer you up, if I know what you mean?'?"

Jayne suppressed another chuckle. "Ohh - guess I didn't think it through that far."

Suddenly there was a shouting from outside. "Hey, Simon, Mal, come here! I think I done found it. We've got our 'in'! Come on..." It was Kaylee's voice, delighted by whatever she had found.

#

They waited until everybody could come before Kaylee started to explain - she had nearly insisted on that much. So Wash put Serenity into a safe parking orbit, with plenty of alarms to alert him to anything that might require his attention, and Simon checked Jayne out and pronounced him fit to go and sit in the lounge for a little while, as long as he was still careful of his spine, and Book lurked on the edges, keeping his disapproval down to a minimum.

"Alright, here it is," Kaylee said, pressing a button on one of the portable screens, so that it showed a color picture, with just a hint of a 3-d effect, and a bit of text around the edge. Looking around at the gathering, she passed it to Mal first. "What do you think?"

"Rickard and Juli Maren," Mal read off the text, while he was trying to figure out what to think. "Scientists, married, long list of schooling and accomplishments - and I've certainly never heard of them before. Have you?"

"No, I haven't," Kaylee admitted excitedly. "As far as I know, nobody here on board has."

"Then how are they our 'in'?" Jayne asked irritably. "I don't get it."

"I think that I've heard of them," Simon started, and Inara nodded as well. "But still..."

"You're missing the point," Kaylee insisted. "Look at them in the picture. Don't they remind you of nobody, even a little?"

"Hmm?" Mal had been about to pass the screen over to Zoe, but at this he scrutinized the image a bit more closely, twisting it this way and that to consider the holographic perspectives. "Well, the guy does seem a bit like our favourite Osiris-born man of learning right here. Maybe something about the good breeding and the better schooling that gives a man that aspect, but still - yeah, they could be brothers at least."

Kaylee was tapping her foot with impatience by this point. "An' what do you think about the girl?"

"Hmm..." Mal considered making a reply, and then decided to draw things out, passing the screen over to Zoe with a bit of a flourish. "What do you think, Zoe?"

"Well, now, let's see." Zoe pondered. "Maybe she resembles that older sister of yours, Kaylee, the one who threw you a party when we got back to Three Hills to sell sugar."

"And so, if she looked like anybody who was a little bit more _here_, somebody who also looks like my sister, that would be..." Kaylee pressed, looking like she was only a few seconds from breaking into tears.

Zoe just grinned slightly and passed the screen on to her husband. "Well, even if the two of you do look like them, and I can't really tell that one way or another, yet, - is that actually a plan? We can't just sneak into the conference, bonk them on the heads when they're not looking, and take their places. _somebody's_ going to notice and get suspicious if we do that."

"_No_, we're not going to do that," Kaylee told him, just a bit witheringly. "The first reason for that is that they're not going to make it to the conference. Nobody expects them to show up, though they'll be welcome if they - make that, **when we do.** They're hermits, and just about nobody has seen them in months or years, which means that nobody there is going to notice that we aren't them."

Mal turned gratefully to the topic of practicalities, as the screen continued to make its way around the group. "Those sound more like assumptions than facts, little Kaylee, and something always goes wrong. What if they _do_ go, and show up when you're already there? What if somebody does recognize you for impostors? The Fed guards are going to be right there, all through the mansion."

"There's more to work through, I admit it," Kaylee put in. "So let's work it, get things as tight as we can. But this is better than having no place to start, ain't it?"

"I agree, I think it's worth looking into, at least," Wash said. "But I think that we're going to need to pay a visit to the real Doctors Maren first. There's a lot that we'll need there - genuine ID badges, their invitation passes, information and props to help out the masquerade, up to and including their means of transport if they have one."

"And we can persuade the real Mister and Missus to stay put, right where they usually do," Jayne pointed out. "I'll volunteer for that duty, if I'm able by then."

"Don't persuade them too hard, Jayne," Zoe said. "They look like decent people, and don't need a heavy hand to stay in line."

"Do you want to hang around too, and keep Jayne in line?" Mal asked her quietly.

"Honestly, sir, I'd rather not babysit Cobb again," Zoe replied in more of a stage whisper. "I was hoping that I could stay on board with Wash this time. There's a lot of Alliance around, and a lot of reasons that we don't want them noticing Serenity, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve that could help in just that respect."

"Wait a second," Simon put in. "Can we **find** where the Marens live? Famous hermits usually don't post their addresses on the Cortex. That's not a good way of being hermits."

"It's right there in Badger's files," Wash said.

"Really?" Simon looked around to see who had the screen, and groaned as he saw Book hand it to Inara. "Did Badger expect us to pull this? Maybe he spotted the resemblance, but didn't want to tell you what to do with your own team, Mal."

"Nah, Badger doesn't have that much tact I think," Mal said. "Plus, he was just about as thorough with everybody else associated with the conference in the slightest detail."

"Badger doesn't usually have intelligence this good, come to think on it," Zoe muttered. "At least, not when he depends on his usual snitches. Wonder where it came from?"

"Does Badger know about Mister Universe, Wash?" Kaylee asked.

"Umm - I've never heard either of them mention each other, but you never know," Wash admitted. "Universe would know **about** Badger, of course - and he does need a few things that he can't get by tricking computer systems into shipping them out to him. Maybe he cut a deal."

"Okay, but we know where," Kaylee summarized for Simon. "And it's not too far - over on Whittier. We can go, take what we need from the Maren's place, and get back - just fashionably late for the conference, which sounds better than showing up on time lately. And - was there anybody who wanted to partner up with Jayne?"

"I think that maybe I will also... enjoy the hospitality of Doctor and Miz Maren," Book said. "Or - does she have the doctorate honorific as well?"

"No, it seems not," Simon said, finally taking the screen himself, the last one in the room to get a good look of his own at it. "Well respected scientist in her own right, a biotechnologist, but never dissertated."

"Well, that works," Zoe said, seeming reassured by the idea of Book tagging along to keep Jayne from going too far. "And that leaves - Inara, do you think that you can actually make my captain look respectable?"

Inara gasped slightly as she realized what Zoe meant, how her options had narrowed with the various teams that had already been set up. Mal just smiled smugly. "Well... he did okay at the Persephone ball... so if I can just keep him from insulting some physical chemist and winding up in a duel to the death with particle accelerators as the weapons, I think that we'll be okay."

Simon let out a choked laugh. "What about me?" River asked.

A few people exchanged glances. "Umm... why don't you stay in the ship with Wash 'n' me, River honey?" Zoe suggested.

"I never get to go anyplace fun," she groused. "Not since the Skyplex."

Simon shot Zoe a confused look, and Zoe just shrugged. "Okay, is there anything else we need to do before setting course for Whittier?" Mal said. There was a moment's silence, and then Mal got up and headed for the stairs.

"I'm on it."

"Could you just wait for me to give you an order, once?"

"Yeah, but not when you're expecting it," Wash wisecracked, and Mal sighed.

"Alright, I guess that does it for my big presentation," Kaylee said, and sighed. "Si-"

She turned toward Simon, and then saw that he was so deeply engrossed in scrolling through the background information of the other scientists that he was probably unlikely to even hear her. Saving face seemed to be called for. "So I'm gonna get out of here for a while. Anybody needs me, I'll be in my b..." She shuddered, remembering how that simple phrase had become a risque in-Joke after Jayne had used it in reference to a pretty female client of Inara's. "Well, you know where I'll be."

"Yeah, alright," Mal said. Kaylee took the forward route, not wanting to bump into Wash on the way if she could help it, but as she crossed the open space of the mostly-empty cargo bay, it was impossible not to notice another pair of shoes making footsteps behind her. Sighing, she came to a stop and dramatically sighed without turning around.

"I hope you don't mind that I came, but I wanted to have a discrete word," Inara's voice came to her, quiet but clear through the space between them.

"I'm not too far from minding," Kaylee complained. "What **is** it?"

"Could we go to my shuttle?" Inara asked. "Nobody would bother us there except Mal, and I don't think he wants to start with me tonight."

"Okay, all right," Kaylee admitted, half-turned, and waited for the much taller Courtesan to catch up with her. She was dressed as elegantly as ever, in a flowing purple gown that covered her from neck to wrists to the tips of her feet, but clung to her figure stylishly. Wearing one of her own much simpler dresses, Kaylee felt quite inadequate and plain.

But she did start to feel better when they were both inside the shuttle and Inara was pouring tea, remembering how close she had felt to Inara when she first rented the shuttle - when Wash, her closest friend among the crew, had been in the midst of his whirlwind romance with Zoe and many of the rest of the Serenity 'family' had found them yet. "So, what's on your head?"

"Hmm? Ohh... well, I just wanted to talk to you about this 'you and Simon being married' plan," Inara started. "It's a clever ruse, to be sure, but somehow I'm not at all surprised that you were the one to think of it first, and I just wondered if you were expecting anything more than finding this power engine that we're after."

"Huh, what?" Kaylee said, shaking her head in agitation. "Come on, I mean... yeah, I'm kinduv sweet on Simon. Ain't a secret to nobody but maybe himself if he's actually forgotten about the time I threw myself at him. Even Jayne called it the first day, in his own unique way, and he ain't what you'd normally call a perceptive man. But - and I've gone all over that just to stress how much this next point is despite the others - but on this occasion, I'm all about the payoff! It'll be... well, it'll partly be nice and partly be very frustrating to have some time to spend with Simon without the rest of you being so much around, and playacting such an - an unusual cover story with him." She sighed. "I wouldn't-a proposed it unless I thought it was the best way of pulling off the heist, and you know that's the truth. If it was you, or Zoe who could have passed for Miz Maren, or if it were Mal or Wash who'd I'd have had to work with, I'd still be behind this approach. Even - well, Simon-River would have been weird for both of them, and pretending to be Jayne's little woman woulda tested my patience, but... you know what I mean?"

"Hmm," Inara said, and sipped her tea pensively. "I understand everything that you're saying out loud, it makes sense, on both the practical and the fairly rational emotional level. But... but I will admit that I'm still concerned. It's easy to say that you're able to handle this; that working with Simon won't get either of you into trouble of some sort, but... but believe me, I do know how deeply a romantic longing can affect you. Anyone, that is." She started to look off into the distance. "You tell yourself that you're the captain of your own heart; that you can work with him - with this person, whoever he may be. Or she... and that everything will be fine. Live with them, study with them. And then, something small happens that maybe you never expected, or that you knew was coming, but either way it blows you off your balance with a reaction, a passion so strong that you couldn't possibly control it. And as beautiful as that moment might be, once it comes _nothing_ is fine and nothing is rational. There's nothing left at that point but to keep walking the tightrope, correcting for the stable footing that you no longer have by swinging crazily this way and that, hoping that you can scramble to some kind of safer footing again. And going into a heist like this one is dangerous enough even if you don't have that extra danger factor of your hormones and your endorphins affecting your judgment."

"Inara, I... I can appreciate that you're looking out for me, for Simon, for the whole gang," Kaylee said. "But I think that you're getting a little over-excited. Nothing is going to happen between Simon and I, especially not on this little trip if we get it organized. Nothing is going to 'blow me off my balance.'" She cocked her head slightly, tea cup held in front of her, completely untouched. "Or was that spiel really about something else, and not me? You and the handsome ex-soldier, pretending that he's one of your rich boys -you're wondering if _you_ can keep it together..."

"That is _enough_!" Inara snapped, not very far from outrage. "There is... is nothing at all like that between Mal and I. I... I was trying to warn you of a serious danger, but if you're not going to treat me with common respect, then... then get the **tien-huh** out!" And she pointed an imperious finger back toward the shuttle hatch.

Kaylee just smiled confidently. "Well, I came here on your invitation. If you don't wanna talk no more, sure I'll go." Got up, put the full cup of tea on the table, and headed off. Just before making it to the curtain that Inara hung up to make the room look a bit less like a bare shuttle cabin, she turned back and said, "We'll just see what's what back on Bellerophon, I suppose."

And for many minutes after she left, Inara fretted and flustered, trying to meditate but unable to achieve anything much in that respect, wondering if her young friend could possibly be right about her - about her emotional reserve, which was the one thing she had to keep intact if she wanted to remain active in the Guild business.


	2. Chapter 2

"So, how does the criminal mastermind feel about this latest caper?" Zoe asked dryly. Simon jumped a little and turned around to face her, from where he'd been nervously wandering around back and forth in the cargo bay. "Getting ready to go under deep?"

"I... I'm trying, but I feel like I'm not accomplishing that much," Simon muttered. They were only about six and a half hours from landing on Whittier near the Maren's isolate cabin, and everybody else seemed to be busy getting ready to put Kaylee's plan into action. "I've been over everything that I could find out about Rickard Maren, both from Badger's files and other publicly available material on the Cortex, but... but I don't feel that same level of confidence that I would when walking into a hospital. This sort of thing is out of my depth, and he's a private guy that nobody really knows much about, and I really don't want to get all stiff and stuttery like I usually do when I'm n... n... nervous." He smiled lamely at the ship's formidable first mate.

"I know it's a bit cliche, but you really don't have that much to worry about," Zoe told him, with a slight smile. "Number one, everybody messes up a little when they're undercover, and it usually doesn't matter. Number two, the fact that your guy is an enigma really does work in our favour - nobody else knows him either or much about him, so he can be whatever you want to 'play him' as. Well, anything that's consistent with being secretive and reclusive, which shouldn't be hard. Third - you don't have to go to the conference with only the information and preparation available to us now. That's part of why we're going to Whittier first."

"Hmm, yeah," Simon muttered, and distractedly he walked over to an iron trunk which was kept in the cargo bay more as a bench seat than to store things in, and sat down on it. "Minor nit point, though - not _everybody_ at the conference will be just as in the dark as we are at the moment."

"Oh?" Zoe wasn't too surprised about that, but she was curious about any details that Simon had found.

"Yeah, I did some in-depth cross-referencing. Doesn't seem that anybody who'll be there has seen the Marens recently, or even corresponded with them in the past few years, but I've found some people that Rickard went through his schooling with, specialists who Juli worked with before she got married, and so on. Those will be the dangerous points."

"Then we'll need to get more information about those times, straight from the Marens themselves," Zoe answered. "Is there anything else that you're worried about?"

"Yes, the technical expertise," Simon moaned. "He can't possibly explain everything about his work to me in the time that we've got - or enough to cover, in the time that we've got available to us before Kaylee and I have to leave for the conference. And - and I don't have enough of a grounding in this engineering stuff. I won't be able to manage."

Zoe cocked her head slightly, and squatted slightly to get down closer to Simon's level. "I thought about that, but - well, Kaylee isn't an engineer on Rickard Maren's level I suppose, but she does know that kind of stuff. She can help you 'cram' for the conference, as it were: on the trip there, at night, maybe even help save you with a critical hint in public. And - she'll need to know medical and bioscience stuff for her own part, and you're the only one who can help her out with that. I suppose that it's a bit lucky that the two of you are the ones who can pull this thing off on the basis of physical appearance - you're well suited to it in other ways too." Simon rolled his eyes. "What was that for?"

"Oh, just... Kaylee and I well suited to playing married," Simon put in, with a bit of a chuckle. "Does something sound not-right about that to you?"

"What? I thought that you liked her too."

"Oh, I... I do." Simon couldn't help a smile, though it was a bit of a wistful one. "Who wouldn't like Kaylee? 'No force in the universe...' as the saying goes, right?" He paused and ummed. "I know that she likes me too, but _every_ time that I've tried, or she's tried, to do something about the fact of our mutual attraction, something goes wrong." He sighed. "Usually whatever it is, it goes wrong quite spectacularly. Either I say absolutely the wrong thing, or she gets pissy over something that wasn't my fault, or one of us passes out, or the sheer cultural difference between the worlds we've come from seems like too much, or someone with a gun arrives at exactly the right moment to ruin things." Simon sighed wearily. "Don't get me wrong, I do sort of look forward to the opportunity to spend some time with her, and to learn more about her specialty and teach her about mine, even under these circumstances." He mulled over what the 'but' was for a few seconds. "But I'm worried about what might go wrong this time, I guess."

"Don't worry about it," Zoe said with a twinkle in her eyes. "That's like trying to expect the unexpected - it never works. When it happens, you'll know."

"Oh, **thank** you, that's very helpful," Simon retorted.

"All part of the service." And with a lazy, mocking salute, Zoe headed off to the stairs up.

#

"Alright, we're getting close enough," Mal warned Wash, from his usual crouch over and behind the pilot's chair. "Can you see a good place to come in for a landing, far enough away that we won't get spotted?"

"Yes, and yes, Captain," Wash retorted a bit edgily. "We've been over this. Why don't you go down to the lower level and pick out a good gun or something?"

"Alright, alright," Mal mumbled, backing away slightly. "Except that my guns aren't there. Let me know if anything goes wrong."

"Yeah, as if," Wash retorted as Mal made his exit. "Let's see, now... Turn off the main forward thrust..." that was a flip of an overhead switch, "lift down to minimum descent stability, and landing gear out." With two more flips, Wash satisfied himself that they were ready to land as silently and unobtrusively as possible. Serenity dropped like something very droppy out of the sky, and would have crashed, if Wash hadn't stamped on a foot petal, to activate emergency lift out of the VTOL thrusters at the last moment. "We have touchdown," he announced unnecessarily over the ship's PA system.

""Right, that's our cue," Jayne said with a bit of an eager smile.

"Jayne, leave the over-under behind," Zoe told him in a bored tone. "We're not going toe-to-toe with alliance riot squads here."

"Oh, come on," Jayne complained, and turned to Mal, but he got no sympathy there. "Can I run and get Vera, then?"

"If you feel like you must," Mal said, "but be quick about her."

"Well, you can't rush a girl like Vera," Zoe pointed out, as Jayne made his tracks.

It wasn't too long before the trio crept out of Serenity's hatch, took a bearing, and slipped through Whittier's twilight towards the cabin. The initial plan had the three of them leading the way, securing the cabin and its two inhabitants, before calling for others to follow - Simon and Kaylee, probably Book and Inara as well, depending on the situation. There were no sentries around the building, of course, and when Zoe scanned with a good bicorder that she'd bought on Ariel, she found only the simplest possible security grid passing through the doors and windows in the walls, and, most surprisingly of all, it wasn't activated. Could even absent-minded scientists be so careless? Perhaps they could.

Jayne led the way inside, or perhaps it was better to say that Vera led the way and Jayne followed quite closely after her. "Alright, get your hands up!" he barked after a moment inside. "Good. Now get out of the bed, carefully..." There were a few cries of muted outrage, and then: "Alright, you can put on a few more clothes if you like, but - actually, hold off on that for just a moment. Where's the little lady?"

Mal and Zoe traded a glance, and then they followed Jayne inside. In the dim light, the resemblance of the man sitting on the bed to Simon was so remarkable that Mal gasped, wondering if there was some way that Simon really had beaten them here. "Oh, good," Jayne said casually. "I frisked him already, but one of you can cover him so I can search his clothes before giving them to him,"

Zoe shot Jayne her what-are-you-rutting-kidding-me-seriously look. "He's a scientist, Jayne. Do you really think he'll have a piece hidden in the inside pocket of his favourite sweater?"

"He's an **engineer**, Zoe," Mal muttered in a low voice. "It can't hurt to be careful, anyway."

So they went through the routine of having Jayne paw through the guy's pants and a heavier shirt, and Mal continued to train his gun on Rickard even after he'd finished dressing. "I think that my friend asked you a question, by the way," Zoe said, trying to stick to business. "It was about where your wife was." She'd already examined the rest of the cabin thoroughly with the bicorder, and satisfied herself that Juli could not have been hiding anywhere in the handful of rooms.

"I **told** him," Rickard muttered sulkily, in about as foul a mood as could be expected given the unexpected start to his morning. "She left yesterday to go hiking. I've gotten to the trickiest part of my new design, and she usually finds some reason to make herself scarce after I start to get on her nerves. She might be miles away by now."

"Do you have any idea when she'll be coming back?" Mal asked, groaning slightly. Even with little things like this, plans never go smooth.

"Could be early this afternoon, could be two days from now. Don't think she'd have packed supplies for longer than that, as well as the tent and the rest of the gear she'd need."

"Well, I suppose that we can't wait," Jayne told him. "Does she carry a communicator wand, for emergencies and such?"

"Yes, one I designed myself. She knows better than to let herself get out of comm range from here." He sighed. "Do you want me to _talk_ to her?"

"Umm, no, I don't think so," Mal told him. Even if they were watching Rickard with a gun to his head as he spoke over the comm, there were too many ways that a couple who had long known each other might send secret signals. If Juli had the slightest hint that Rickard was in trouble, she might call for Alliance law patrol, or make tracks to a friend's house, or do any of a dozen other things that might stimy all their plans. "We need to find a way to track her based on that communicator," he muttered under his voice to Zoe and Jayne.

"Listen, what's all this about?" Rickard asked, sounding genuinely curious. "Are you after ransom? Because the people who I still work with won't pay much for me - or for Juli, I think. We're too 'eccentric' to be of value. I have some Alliance credit in my own name, but if you want me to access it and turn it into coin without anybody raising a red flag..."

"No, that is not it," Jayne told him, as Zoe left the room again. "We may be low thieves, but what we're after is not yours - at least, not what we're after to keep."

"Hmm." Rickard considered again. "Not one of my designs or devices either then, I suppose. What **is** it that you need to borrow?"

Mal decided to say it straight out. Rickard seemed to be a plain-spoken man, if somewhat lost in his own head, and would probably appreciate forthrightness. "We need your identities. Yours and your wife's. To get somewhere that you were invited and, I think, had not planned to go."

Rickard's eyes widened slightly with appreciation of the idea. "What, that Baty miniaturization conference thing?" He weighed that notion. "Interesting. Well, as you say, we wouldn't have used those invitations ourselves, nor... our ID bracelets, or the space-sled. What else would you need to make this masquerade complete? I don't think that either of you have much similarity in features with me, and your lady friend is entirely the wrong hue of her skin."

"You're trying to get us thinking you want to co-operate?" Jayne growled softly. "I don't trust nobody, especially a stranger. Why would you play ball?"

"I've always been interested in trying new things, and I've never tried to pass someone else off as myself," Rickard quipped. "But more seriously... if there is one thing in this verse that I cannot _bear_, it is having one of those... those _things_," (and he waved generally at mid-chest level out into the room,) "pointed at myself. Figured that if I 'played ball', as you put it, I might gain enough goodwill that you would forebear."

"What, the guns?" Mal asked, looking down at his little pistol. "Well... we'll still use them if you force us to."

"I would certainly expect such a reaction," Rickard answered evenly. "And thus, it ill behooves me to provide any such stimulus."

"Can I shoot him just for talkin' so funny, Mal?" Jayne complained.

"No," Mal said, raising his eyes to the ceiling in despair.

It was just at that point that Zoe reappeared. "The next wave will be coming soon," she informed them. "I took the liberty of inspecting Mister Maren's comm rig, and it shouldn't be too much trouble to get a lock on the portable signal and follow it. The only questions are who and how. If she's walked as far as all that, we can't follow her on foot, in time."

"You could take the sled for that too," Rickard suggested. "It's got the homing comm function built in, actually, and will give one of your people the opportunity to practice."

Zoe, for her part, looked nearly as distrustfully at Rickard as Jayne had, but eventually she nodded. "That does have some practical advantages."

"Sled's a two-seater craft," Mal mused, "and I don't figure S... the good doctor, for doing any piloting. But she'll need someone better able to deal with trouble. Which of you has more experience flying small craft?"

"Precious little, for me," Jayne disclaimed. "Took over a Jiangyin jumping bug when the trained driver got shot by a sniper - but I crashed it before we'd properly made our getaway."

"It's been a while, for me," Zoe offered, "but I was steering little inter-ship tugs before my mama gave me the [birds and bees] talk. I think I can handle it."

"Alright, fair enough," Mal said. He was comfortable with the notion of Kaylee and Zoe going after the wife themselves. Wondered it would be like when they came face to face. "Go and see about warming the engine up, or whatever."

"Interesting," Rickard said as Zoe left. "So, might I be permitted to inquire what the arrangements will be, once - Kaylee and the doctor leave, prepared to impersonate myself and my wife? It seems unlikely that you will entirely depart at that point."

"No, I'm afraid that we can't let you call in any kind of warning," Mal said. "If you don't cause trouble... then we'll do our best not to inconvenience you, **won't we** Jayne? You can continue your work or whatever, but I'm afraid that if the better half finds it frustrating to be around while you're working at this stage, one or the other of you are likely to be disappointed, because we won't be able to keep an eye on her effectively and allow her to roam."

"What about if **I** find it frustrating to let him work, Mal?" Jayne asked, sounding disgruntled.

"Hello?" Book asked, from just outside the cabin door. "Ahh, guns down I see. I hadn't hoped for so much."

"He asked nicely," Mal told the Shepherd, and then looked back to Rickard to see his reaction to the engineer's first look at Simon and Kaylee. The flabbergasted jaw-drop was very impressive, and it warmed Mal's cynical heart slightly.

"Someone's waiting for you out in the space-sled," Mal told Kaylee in an undertone. It wasn't something that had occurred to him before they'd come, but they'd all need to refrain from using names in front of the Marens, or even repeating the ones that they had already used with Rickard, though if he had a good memory, that was probably wasted effort. "Don't use names," he whispered to Kaylee, hoping that she'd understand the point.

"Got it." And she let her glance flick over to Simon for just a moment - yes, that did make some sense. As a high-priority Alliance fugitive, Simon's identity, (and River's, but the Marens shouldn't even meet her,) was an equally high priority secret. Fortunately, that one he hadn't spoiled yet, though he had mentioned that Simon was a doctor of some description.

"Hello, Doctor Maren," Simon said, going over to his opposite number. "It's great to have an opportunity to meet you, even under these somewhat strange circumstances, but I'm afraid that I have a few specific areas that I'll need to question you about, in order to..."

"Yes, I quite understand," Maren replied, nodding affably. "There will be people at the symposium who have history with me. I suppose you've already done a cursory search for matches?"

"Yes," Simon said a bit warily. "I have a full roster, if you'd... like to look at it, and maybe spot someone I missed?" He looked away to stare at Mal, and then Jayne, for a moment, as if asking for an explanation of Rickard's attitude. Mal just shrugged. There was a possibility that Rickard might provide a bit of misinformation meant to expose Simon as a fraud, but Mal didn't think so - his 'read' on the scientist confirmed that he was intrigued about the challenge, and scared of their guns. Plus, it would be hard to manufacture a 'smoking gun' that couldn't be plausibly explained away as a mistaken memory.

"Certainly," Rickard said, and extending his hand for the printout list.

#

Kaylee giggled softly to herself as she manoeuvred the gravity sled over the forests of Whittier - navigating in open air, without even birds to avoid, was intuitive enough that she required almost no attention to stay on course, aside from carefully watching the tracking display to get updates on exactly where their course was leading them. That left the rest of her mind free to revel. She wondered what the cozy little craft would manoeuvre like once she had it out in orbital space.

"Doing well," Zoe confirmed. "If you and Simon take off from here, it'll be around twenty-five standard hours' trip back to Bellerophon."

"Not too bad," Kaylee judged. "It's just our luck that the two moons are so close together at this point in time, and will stay well aligned for the duration of the conference."

"Yes, but..." Zoe sighed. "It's one thing to take a journey of twenty-five hours in a ship like Serenity, or even one of our shuttles, if you like the company. In this dinky thing..." She trailed off, and Kaylee checked her airspace carefully before allowing one lightning-quick look behind her. The living compartment of the sled was smaller than Serenity's kitchen, including the pilot's and co-pilot's seats, the bunk, a compartment full of supplies, (mostly dried rations,) and a few completely exposed sanitary fixtures.

"Okay, yeah, I do take your point," Kaylee admitted. "Say, is there even a Cortex hook-up?"

"If I guess right, then I'd say that it was..." Zoe muttered, then activated the pilot's screen and touched a small icon in the bottom corner. A familiar Cortex welcome node flashed up. "Right, that would be built into your station as well, I figure."

"Right, okay," Kaylee said, thinking it through. "So if Simon or I need the Cortex for preparing our roles, then we're up here, and not - oh, say, relaxing on the bunk or anything."

"Are you thinking of the both of you, relaxing on that bunk together?" Zoe allowed herself to tease the young mechanic. "That sounds very cozy."

"Oh, you know what I mean," Kaylee muttered, but a glint had entered her eyes when Zoe mentioned the prospect. "That is..."

"Careful," Zoe muttered softly.

"What? Was I about to say something wrong?" Kaylee asked, shaking her head. She hadn't even been sure what she thought she was about to say.

"No, careful of the tracker," Zoe put in. "As in, don't talk until you've figured out where we land."

"Oh, right."

When the sled had lowered itself to the edge of a small open field, it became clear that Juli Maren had noticed the ship, but was waiting at the edge of the trees, probably wondering what had possessed Rickard to come flying after her. Now, how would she react to the sight of strangers emerging from the vehicle, Zoe wondered. "You go first," she suggested to Kaylee.

"Why do I go first?"

"Just trust me, okay?" Kaylee relented at the insistent tone of the other woman, popped up the large plasticized canopy, and hopped out of the pilot's chair and down the ladder on that side of the vehicle. Juli stared intently, probably having noticed the resemblance to herself and not sure at all what to make of it. Zoe allowed Kaylee a five second's count head start and then left the sled herself, glad that the angle Kaylee had landed at hid the co-pilot's side ladder from Juli's vantage point.

Juli Maren got over her surprise and made a dash back into the brush, but as familiar as she was with the woods, she had probably tired herself out with an early start, and the women of Serenity quickly surrounded her. "You'd best come with us quietly," Zoe said. "We already have your husband... safe."

"What the **tien-huh** is this all about?" Juli exclaimed, in a voice that wasn't quite a shout, but certainly carried. "Why are you in _our_ sled? Why would Rickard need you or anybody else to be safe out here?"

"It's not really like we saved him from anybody else," Kaylee said, honestly and a bit ominously. "Just - it would be a really good idea if you didn't cause us any trouble. We don't mean you any harm, but - well, there's this plan, and it really would take a long time to explain."

Juli started to reach for her backpack. "And what if I... um, I don't want to listen?"

"You'd better," Zoe breathed. Quickly enough that neither of the other girls had noticed her drawing, a seven-shooter was in her hand. "Kaylee - could you be a dear and take that pack? Yeah, thanks. I'm sure that an experienced backpacker would carry something with a bit of firepower in these woods, just in case of wild beasts." She smiled frostily. "A **smart** backpacker opts for somewhere more accessible than the pack."

Juli was stewing in her own frustration visibly by this point, but didn't resist as Kaylee took the heavy canvas bag away from her.

"Let's go," Zoe said, gesturing with her gun, pointing them back towards where the sled had been landed. "Now, to boil our interest down to the most salient facts - my friend and another member of our company, back at the cabin, are going to be pretending to be you and your husband for a few days. If you co-operate and don't cause trouble, then we'll give back all your IDs and property once the mission is done, and never bother you again."

"This is to rob the conference, right?" Juli asked. "You want to swipe one of the un-encased engines. It's the only thing that makes much sense. And what if the authorities decide that _we_ really were the ones who committed the crime? Did you think of that?"

From the sound that emerged out of Kaylee, she hadn't. Zoe had wondered about the same thing herself, but hadn't worried about it too much before meeting the Marens. Now, it was a bit harder to be blase about the possibility.

"Who rides back in the bunk?" Kaylee asked when they got back to the sled. "I hadn't thought about this."

"I did," Zoe told her, "and I will. I will also take the backpack. You need more practice at the controls, still."

"You'd better not crash this thing," Juli muttered. "It's a really great sled."

#

"How's it going?" Wash called out, as soon as he heard the sound of someone climbing up the stairs between the kitchen and the crew's hall.

"Not too bad," Jayne muttered. "The husband's eager to play along, and the woman's sullen. Who woulda thought it? But Kaylee's managing to draw her out, bit by little bit."

"Alright," Wash said. "So, what brings you here? Just wanted to come and keep me company?"

"Nope, I wanted to grab some stuff outta my room, before you pulled up and took off," Jayne said. "Feeling all lonely in here? What about the Tam girl?"

"River?" Wash considered. "She was in here talking with me not long after the others left, but she wandered off - I admit that I didn't much mind at the time." He shot Jayne a meaningful look. "I'm not much for following her kind of talk, I admit."

"Hell, who is, even her kin?" Jayne scoffed.

"But I suppose we'd best find her, if only to make sure that she hasn't wandered off into the forests herself. We'd never hear the end of it for taking off without her."

"Yeah, you just make sure you do take her along, so that she's not showing up at the cabin and bothering me," Jayne put in. "It's a pretty sweet setup, too. Are you going to take a look before we go?"

"No, better if I don't, I think," Wash put in. "One less face for either of them to remember."

"Oh, yeah, right. But anyway - it looks all rustic and all, but the satellite cortex hook-up and the kitchen are as rich as those Bellerophon estates. Both of them have their own laboratory workshops, fully equipped and all."

"Makes sense," Wash put in. "If I was brilliant and wanted to retire into obscurity, I'd be careful to do it in style."

"Yeah." Jayne shrugged. "Oh, Doctor M had some intelligence about what the arrangements at the conference would likely be - maybe several years out of date, but Mal's listening to what he has to say as an addondum to Badger's info."

"Makes sense," Wash said. "Does he know anything about Artemis?" That was the nearest Bellerophon freeport to the conference site - a floating trade outpost, and the contingency plans included Serenity docking there for a spell, since they'd be able to reach the rendezvous point much faster than if they had to brake from orbit, especially if the orbital timing was bad.

"No, I asked, and he said that he'd never been."

"Okay, thanks for trying."

"Say nothing of it," Jayne suggested, and headed off to his bunk, to look for what, Wash knew not.

#

"Hmm... yes, not bad at all," Rickard said as Kaylee stepped out of the Privacy room, doing a slow spin to model the outfit. She didn't feel nearly as charitable towards the severe blue blouse and skirt herself, but hadn't argued with the unanimous decision that it would be a look Juli might choose to arrive at an important scientific conference in. Of course, that was still more than a day away, but Mal had suggested that they have the big send-off in appropriate clothes, and then change into casual wear once the sled was well away. Kaylee might have protested about the idea of deliberately increasing the number of times they'd need to change clothes inside the sled, with all the limitations on privacy that entailed... if a part of her wasn't eager to throw privacy out the window, when it came to just herself and Simon.

"Yes, you look... very much the part, K..." Simon said, and choked off when Zoe shot him a what-are-you-actually-stupid glare. (He'd been warned about not using anybody's name in the crew of Serenity in front of the Marens, but had a very hard time actually sticking to it.) "Is there anything else before we leave?"

"No, I can't think of anything," Rickard said expansively. "We've been over the background information, and the technical details, as well as we can without another two weeks to get into serious tutoring. You've got exactly the luggage we would have taken to an event like that conference, if we'd ever actually go, with an emphasis on personal knickknacks that might be recognized or strike people as 'so like us.' I would think that that covers it."

"There's something bugging me," Juli muttered, not looking at anybody. "Could I see that list of invitees again?"

There was a moment's pause. "I'm sure that we'd be able to help you with that, Miz Maren, if you'd say please, and, I don't know, actually look at one of my people while you're asking," Mal said in his best 'polite captainly authority' tone. "Care to try it again?"

Juli groaned, put on an artificially sunny smile, and swept her gaze all over the crew present. "Please, guys, you know what I'm asking for? Does somebody here have it?"

"That would be me, actually," Simon said. "Your husband made notes, and I was going to be studying them on the way." After waiting a moment to see if Juli would repeat the request, and getting a slightly impatient nod from Mal, he hurried over and showed it to her.

"Gorram it," she swore after staring at it for maybe fifteen seconds. "Something is nagging at me about the whole list, but I can't even narrow it down to one particular name."

"So there's somebody else who maybe knows you, but you can't even tell us who, never mind from where?" Kaylee asked, frowning at the prospect.

"Maybe that's it." Juli shrugged. "Maybe it's something else entirely, or something that I'm just imagining. Sorry."

"We can get another copy of that list, right?" Rickard asked. "So maybe she'll figure it out later?"

"Well, what good is it to... to our people?" Jayne growled, "If you only figure it out after they leave?"

"There's such a thing as a Cortex wave," Rickard told him. "I - well, I guess I just assumed that we would keep in touch. So that if there's any important information to pass either way, like warnings, or questions."

"I suppose I was assuming that radio silence would be safer," Mal said. "Obviously we can't risk having anyone else discover who they might be contacting. Will there be any opportunity to take security precautions?"

"Oh, boy, how much there is that you don't know about that world," Juli volunteered.

"What that's supposed to mean?" Jayne snapped.

"Just - well, I don't imagine this will have changed since I last made it to a scientific conference," Rickard said, chuckling. "They expect that delegates will extensively modify the Cortex interfaces provided - especially to fit their own security requirements. Did you pack an encryption chip, Juli?"

"Well, yeah, I slipped it in. Actually not sure if I know where the mate for it is," she said. Rickard shook his head, took a set of matched computer memory cards from his desk, tossed one to Simon, and tucked the other meaningfully into his own shirt pocket.

"What about security cameras or other devices in the actual rooms?" Zoe asked.

"Maybe a few 'for the sport', but again, they'd expect top scientists to sweep them out. The gear to detect and disable some basic bugs would be, again, in your luggage."

"Okay, well, we'll see about all of that," Simon said stiffly. "If it seems appropriate to call, we'll call, but I don't think that promising to check in for the sake of checking in is that wise."

Mal nodded meaningfully at Kaylee, and she returned the gesture without Simon seeing it. Then Kaylee made a big show of hugging all her friends goodbye, and everybody escorted them out to the space sled, which Kaylee lifted up into the air.

"Alright, so what's next?" Juli asked after a moment. "Are the rest of you leaving now too, except for our designated watchdogs?"

"I don't think so," Zoe said. "S... our ship can move faster than that sled, so we don't have the same time constraints, and it might be better if we weren't entering Whittier orbit until a few hours later, and at a very different spot."

"Then can we offer you dinner?" Rickard asked, smiling. Juli shot him a dirty glare. "Come on, it's been a while since this house has had had a crowd, and good company, and a little merriment? I mean - we only just met you folks today, and you're very politely holding us hostage after stealing our identities and all... but I think that I like you anyway."

Mal grinned. "What's for supper?"

"How do you feel about turkey?"

"As in, actual bird that used to gobble?" Jayne asked, incredulous. Juli sighed loudly.

#

"So, are you going to change now?" Kaylee asked, as the sled was still climbing through the atmosphere. Under the effects of the gravity lens, it was very nearly acting like the moon below wasn't there, which allowed an incredibly small thrust engine to keep it aloft and push it higher. Even though gravity focusing technology was also used to a smaller relative extent with a ship like Serenity, it was amazing to experience the effect like this. "That's a mighty snazzy suit you've got on - wouldn't want it to - wrinkle, or anything."

"Um, what about you?" Simon asked, his cheek twitching in a sudden tic.

"What about me, what?"

"I mean - are you going to change too?"

"Of course, but not just now," Kaylee pointed out. "On account of how I'm flying the sled right now, and trying to pilot through the atmosphere and gettin' out of clothes at the same moment sounds like a good route to take to all kinds of badness - both flight-related and clothes-related badness, come to think of it." She giggled winningly. "It won't be too long before I'm up out of the stratosphere of Whittier, in fair empty space, and then you can take over at the controls while I slip into something a mite more comfortable."

"You - you want me to pilot the ship? I mean, I guess it makes sense, when you can't be doing it yourself, but..."

"Not really piloting, Simon," she told him. "A sled like this, doesn't need somebody steering her all the time, anymore than Serenity does. You just need to watch for something going wrong." Kaylee looked over and smiled at him. "On the other hand, if you do _want_ to pilot for a bit, then I can try talking you through a few simple manoeuvres - while I'm sitting in the other chair. Is that a deal?"

"I... I guess I'll have to think about that one."

"Fair enough. Change?"

"Oh, right, yeah." Simon got up out of his chair, took a few steps, and then pitched into the bunk, muttering under his breath. A few seconds later, one of the two bags that had been packed for Kaylee/Juli got soundly deposited onto the co-pilot's chair. There was a silence that started off as awkward and then slowly became pregnant. (Oh, wasn't that a weird mental picture?) "So, umm, Kaylee... what - what was your life like before you came to Serenity?" Simon asked.

"Umm... very dull and quiet I guess. I was still living on my Daddy's farm on Three Hills, looking for decent work, and - well, just exactly how do you define 'before?' Did you hear the story about Bester, by the by?"

"Bester?" Simon tried to place the name. "He was the mechanic before you, wasn't he?"

"I suppose you could say that... he'd gotten hired under such pretences, at least."

"Oh." Kaylee couldn't risk a look back out of curiosity about what Simon's face was doing at that moment, but he was turned away from her, so she couldn't see any face. On the other hand - well, he had been stripped down to briefs and an undershirt, so with him facing that way, she did get to see some interesting stuff, and had to force herself to turn back around quickly. "Mal mentioned that he fired Bester for being unable to sort out a fairly minor problem in decent time, and that he was lucky you'd been around to take over, but... I guess that's all I've really heard of him, why?"

"Hmm..." Kaylee considered. "I'll tell you that story on this trip, really, but I don't think this is the right moment - okay? Maybe after we're both a little bit tipsy, if they actually serve booze at this thing."

"Hmm... we'd better not get more than 'a bit tipsy', considering the job that we have to do," Simon reminded her. "And not even speak about our own lives - unless we're safely in our room I guess."

"Yeah, of course we won't."

"Okay - well, you pick something that this is a good moment to tell me," Simon said, chuckling under his breath. "Something in the year before you left."

"Hmm... well, let's see... it was about at the start of that year when a good friend of mine, Melany Waite, left the planet, and I was pretty despondent when it sank in, after a few days, that she was gone. Melany an' me, we weren't two peas in a pod or anything - she always thought it was weird for a girl to be so into machines, and I didn't understand about some of the things she liked to do to have fun either, mostly involving parties. But... but Three Hills is a very quiet and reserved planet, or at least the part where we grew up was, and - and we both had a kind of restlessness, a passion for life, that other people didn't understand."

"But she met a guy from off-planet, a rich man from Ariel, Barrett Thomas, and he whisked her off her feet and offered to take her with him and show her the 'verse, and I was happy for her to get that opportunity. Even if it left me back home alone, looking for decent work, and trying to avoid the attentions of towner boys like Kairy Brand."

"Ahh," Simon said, slipping into the co-pilot's seat again, wearing knee-length shorts and a soft white tee shirt. "Did you ever meet Melany again?"

"Oh, yeah, after I'd signed up with Serenity, and before I met you," Kaylee said. "We spent some time on Paquin together, but it wasn't the same anymore, we'd both become different people, and I guess once we were both off Three Hills there wasn't that same bond holding us together anymore. Also - well, things got complicated because Melany and Barrett were on the other side of a job from Mal and Zoe. And Inara was involved there too; this was before she started renting a shuttle. And you _cannot_ tell Mal I told you about that, because he still doesn't know that she was working against him."

"I... I couldn't even begin to explain any of that to anyone, so you can rest easy, I won't spill your secrets," Simon promised her. "What now?"

"We're still about ten minutes away from the end of the turbulent zone," Kaylee said, and then realized that he hadn't been asking about her changing clothes. "Umm... okay, my turn." This little game sounded promising, when nothing more intimate was offering, after all. "What was the day before River left for the Academy like for you? Did you see her then, or were you working so hard that you couldn't?"

"Oh, no, I... I was still in my residency, but it was in the same city where Mother and Father lived, after all, and - and I think I actually asked for a schedule change as a favour so that I could make the goodbye party that we threw her." He sighed slightly. "It was mostly just a family affair - we sent invitations to classmates of River's from the school she was in at the time, but only two showed up. I guess the rest were well glad to be rid of her."

"Oh," Kaylee said, disappointed that the story had such a sad note in it.

"Yeah, well," he said. "But River didn't seem to care about the meagre turnout. She was... was so excited, and nervous at the same time. Just about leaving home, being away from us for so long, and a little worried about if she might have gotten herself into something that she couldn't handle, academically speaking." He heaved a long sigh. "I guess that was the last time I saw her so happy, so vital - without that pain, that haunted look in her eyes."

"You'll be able to help her, yet," Kaylee told him, because she wanted to say something reassuring, and believed that it truly would happen.

"Thanks." And he reached out and took her hand, so Kaylee steered with the other arm, not wanting to break that contact for anything.


	3. Chapter 3

"Well, that was a mighty kind reception," Mal allowed, once everyone had had their fill of the turkey, and the roast tubers and other fixings. The Marens had broken out wine, but Mal had been careful not to take too much himself or let his crew overindulge, using the scientist couple's own drinking as a baseline to compare against. He'd also done his best to take precautions against any kind of poisoning or drugging of the food, or anything added to the drinks, though once he started on that track his brain got paranoid enough that he had to accept that there was little chance to be sure that Juli hadn't tried something.

Since she had free access to the food in the midst of helping to prepare the meal, his strategy had been to block her from her most likely accesses to any toxins - refusing on any account to let her enter her own laboratory, without saying why when she insisted, and still keeping the backpack that she'd been carrying on her hike away from her. He supposed that she'd probably known why he was acting that way, but things had gone smoothly enough once the meal started.

"Are you sure that I can't prevail on you to tell me anything more about this plan, Captain?" Rickard asked, in a louder voice than his usual friendliness. "If my dear bride is correct that you're actually trying to steal a Baty prototype, then just getting the two of them on the conference grounds won't be enough. Security will be tight - not that they'd really be expecting people like us to steal something, but still - the regulations don't make enough exceptions."

"I... I think not," Mal muttered. "The less you know, the better for you, I think."

"Yes, perhaps," Rickard said, disappointed by that. "I've been wondering if, when the all-clear has been given, and the caper is over for best or for worst, it might be better for Juli and me to also arrange to be somewhere that the authorities cannot immediately find us."

"Wouldn't say no to that," Zoe said, "but it's up to you at that point. I'll wish you luck, but that's all."

"And we should be leaving now," Inara said. "Most of us, that is. The time is nigh upon us."

"Right," Juli muttered. "And who's staying behind to be our guardians, anyway?"

"That would be my friend and I," Book said, indicating Jayne. "Hopefully that will be acceptable to you?"

"And what if it's not?" Jayne muttered. Juli didn't seem at all displeased, though.

Mal took Book and Jayne aside before they left the cabin, though there wasn't really much in the way of last-minute instructions to give them. He'd been especially careful to not let Jayne indulge himself freely on the wine, and Book never drank anything stronger than tea. Probably because of all those warnings in the Good Book about wine and such. As he, Zoe, and Inara stepped out of the cabin, Zoe activated her communicator wristband. "How's it going, honey? River still accounted for?"

"Oh, sheesh, I haven't checked her in about a half an hour. I'll go now."

"No," Mal put in, speaking from his gut. (Metaphorically.) "You've got a pre-flight checklist to go through, mister. We'll go to River's room first thing when we get in, or at least..."

"I'll handle that," Inara said.

"Good enough," Zoe agreed.

"What was all that?" Wash asked. "I can't hear you if you don't speak right into Zoe's wrist."

Mal sighed slightly, and Zoe gave Wash the recap. "Okay, and what if Inara **doesn't** find River in her cabin?"

"Then we pause the takeoff countdown until we find her," Zoe said. "But if she hadn't snuck off earlier, then it seems unlikely that she'll be off in the forest this time."

River wasn't in her room, and there was a bit of panicked searching before she was eventually located in the number two shuttle, drawing surreal pictures on the walls with a graphit stick that she'd found somewhere. Mal called Zoe back in when he found her there, (Zoe had started searching the woods,) and went over to the dining room, collapsing into a chair.

Inara came in a few minutes later, after Serenity's decks had bumped and swayed a little. "We all accounted for?" she asked Mal.

"Yeah, I... I found River." He waved over to the vague direction of the shuttle in question. "And Wash wouldn't a taken off if he hadn't heard that Zoe was back, and had sealed up the cargo bay doors."

"I suppose not." Inara sat down next to him. "Alright, now that Whittier seems taken care of, I suppose we need to prepare for our own phase of the mission."

"Oh, right," Mal said, sighing. "You need to teach me about being a proper gentleman and all that."

"If only I can, in the time we have," Inara intoned dramatically. "Well, before we get to the general basics, a few specifics about the cover identity that I arranged for you. Like Simon and Kaylee, you'll be taking a real person's credentials, though he isn't of so much note. That's the only way to be sure, since the Alliance security will be checking all guests against some central database of registered persons back on one of the Core worlds. If we make up somebody from whole cloth, that name and code won't appear in their files."

"Makes some sense," Mal agreed. "But - what if a real scientist that the guy organizing all this wants never got registered? There are a lot of people out on the rim worlds, and even some in the borderlands, who never did get their birth credentials in."

"I imagine that those pursuing a career this high in the sciences will have made a point of registering, Mal," Inara told him. "If there's somebody who hasn't, they might be able to get a temporary pass, but only if there are a lot of other people already present - registered people, who know them and will vouch for them."

"Right," Mal agreed glumly. "So... Nathaniel Hammond. Exactly how did you get Master Nathaniel's info, and does he know about our ruse?"

"He hasn't objected," Inara said with a sly smile. "Mostly because I gave him an extension on his overdue invoices."

"Really - a deadbeat customer?" Mal asked. "Somehow I always figured that paying a companion was _before_ the appointment."

"We generally prefer it that way," she admitted. "Keeps us from having to work as debt collectors - or hire them. But there are always exceptions."

"Okay, then tell me more about Nathaniel."

#

Kaylee made a huge stretch and dropped the white blouse into a tiny little pile on the bunk beside her, hoping that Simon would turn around or at least look into something that would give him a reflection, but as far as she could tell, he was being all too vigilant about the space-sled's course. Oh well. There would be other opportunities - and this sort of thing wasn't what the trip was about, right? That was what she'd told Inara... but it was much harder to pretend, even to herself, that she was all about the heist now that she was alone in space with Simon. At least this wasn't truly deep space - not that the sled would really have been up to a trip like that. Whittier wasn't that small behind them, and gashious Georgia loomed large, though Bellerophon was still only a tiny coloured dot far ahead.

She stopped showing off for the guy who wasn't even looking, finished undressing and dressing as quickly as she could. Simon did turn around a little bit early, just as she was finishing pulling up the light tight-pants, but probably didn't even see anything good. (Darnit, an opportunity missed after all.) "Okay, so what now?" she asked, heading up to the free co-pilot's chair. "Do you want to share more memories of our childhoods?"

"No, that's probably enough unburdening of our early personal traumas for now," Simon joked. "Actually, I've thought about it, and if you still wanted to teach me how to actually steer the sled, I'd like to learn."

Kaylee blinked in surprise. She'd thought that Simon's statement that he would 'think about it' had been a polite brush-off, not a serious statement of weighing the possibilities. "Okay, sure. Let's see... first, there are the gravity lenses. This sled has three of them, and each can be set independently... so that you could completely nullify the gravitational pull of one body, partially moderate that of a second, and increase that of a third." She started to show him the controls. "Each has its own spherical gyro-control to identify a particular direction, an intensity lever, an aperture dial to specify whether the effect should be wide or narrow, and a control to indicate whether it should stay locked to the main gravitational source as we move and reorient. Got that so far?"

"Umm... yeah, I think so," Simon said, gulping slightly. "Is that it? I understand the principle of gravity lensing, but if we have to intensify gravitational sources in the direction that we're going to accelerate..."

"No, we do have manoeuvring thrusters too," Kaylee said, showing him where to find the controls for those as well, and continued with the lesson, Things were just wrapping up - she had led Simon through several fancy manoeuvres, and he seemed to have enjoyed himself - when a radar alert popped up, and zeroing in on that spot with the optical sensors, Kaylee got a sinking feeling. That familiar dark-blue institutional shape... "Okay, we've got an Alliance patrol boat coming on over to take a look-see. Hit the blue X in the upper left corner, that'll transfer all control back over to my station."

"Alliance?" Simon asked, gulping slightly. "What would they be doing here?"

"They keep an eye on space traffic all over the place, and a little sled like this, way out in the middle of planetary space, far from any moons, doing zigzags and loops probably struck them as unusual," she pointed out. "Don't likely mean any more than that. But I ain't ever been pulled over in something like this raft, and they might get pissy about the formalities."

"Why is this any different from... oh," Simon muttered. "If we were in Serenity, they'd be asking to board through an airlock, or at least they might, right?"

"Yeah," Kaylee told him. "Be quiet - they're making some noise."

She took a moment before pressing the blinking red button indicating an incoming call on standard ship-to-ship channels, and waited for the official on the patrol boat to speak first. "Virgo 3 class gravity sled, state your designation and the name of your complement." That wasn't the same formula that 'Serenity' got, but maybe they just figured that a little sled wouldn't have such a large complement that it could be stated straight out.

And suddenly Kaylee realized a problem - she hadn't asked the Marens what designation the sled was registered under, and didn't know where they kept the black slip for it. (They had to find that, just in case! Surely it would be kept aboard the sled, and not in the cabin. Or had it been packed in the luggage?)

"The Camelot Blackbird," Simon whispered to her after a second, and somehow that phrase did sound familiar. Had Rickard told it to Simon while she'd been busy trying to get Juli to say something about her old colleagues who would be at the conference? Well, there was nothing but to try it. If it didn't match up with anything in the official registration database, there'd be more trouble, but... he'd already be wondering at the delay.

"Hello from the Camelot Blackbird, sir," she said with polite blandness. "I'm Juli Maren, and my husband Rickard is the only other person on board."

"Are you under any technical difficulties? When we spotted your vessel, it seemed to be under unusual acceleration manoeuvres."

"No, just... just breaking the monotony of a long trip to Bellerophon, sir. We're not used to traveling this much."

"Hmm." The Alliance official considered. "This is Commander Payton, from the Alliance patrol ship 'Great divide.' On the basis of a random selection, and the circumstances, regulations demand that we board your vessel via airlock and make a personal inspection. However, visual inspection of your craft, and the manufacturer's specifications, indicate that there are no airlock facilities available. Is this true?"

"Yes, sir," Kaylee admitted honestly. "What do you intend to do about that?"

"I haven't decided. All vessels without airlocks are specifically required under local regulations to file flight plans for trips outside atmospheric limits. Were you aware of this?"

"Um - no."

"I see. And what is your emergency protocol in the event of a hull breach?"

What did that matter, Kaylee wondered. "We have an emergency patch kit, two pressure suits, and distress callers. I figured that we'd decide what order to use them in based on the circumstances."

"Where are you bound to on Bellerophon?"

"The Bentley conference, sir."

"You've got invitations to that deal?"

"Yes."

Commander Payton sighed. "I'm sending along a summons to appear for these regulatory violations in three week's time, back on Whittier. That will be all for now."

"Very well, sir." As Kaylee closed the video communicator window, the little summons popped up in a corner of the screen. One more thing that they'd be putting on the real Marens, it seemed, since certainly neither of them would be able to show up for the Whittier court. Probably wouldn't matter that much. She turned to Simon. "Okay, lesson is over, I guess. What next?"

"Umm, I don't know," Simon said. The close call with the Alliance, (at least, it could fairly easily have gone worse,) had squashed his good mood as well. "Maybe grab some food? I know that I'm kind of hungry. There wasn't time to grab more than a bowl full of dry breakfast cereal back on Whittier."

"Okay, yeah." She got up and went to the supply cupboard. "Won't be much great food on this trip, I'm afraid... I've seen sleds like this that actually have a heating unit, but it just means more that you have to wash out in the bathroom sink and so on."

"That's okay, I don't have great expectations," Simon laughed. "Just something filling, that I can munch on and not have to think too hard for a while."

"Oh, right," Kaylee said, the mention of 'thinking' making a mental connection. "We're supposed to be coaching each other on our specialties as we go, aren't we? I mean, it doesn't have to be now, but..."

"Yeah, we can leave that for a while," Simon said. "Not too long, I suppose. Are we going to have to sleep in shifts?"

Kaylee turned from the cupboard with two handfuls of likely-looking packages and shot him a look. "Well, I'm up for sharing the bunk, if you are. It ain't any smaller than the one Wash and Zoe have."

"Yeah, but... well, we'll see," Simon said, and Kaylee tried not to let disappointment show on her face. "These chairs are more comfortable than some places I've slept actually - I could probably try getting some rest right here."

"Rice krisps, peanut butter cracker sandwiches, and chocolate caramel bars?" Kaylee offered him. "There's actually a freezer compartment with some iced treats, but I wasn't sure how fresh they would be."

"I think that Rickard restocked everything before we left," Simon pointed out, taking the chocolate and some of the rice krisps. Kaylee snatched one chocolate bar back. "It's not very nutritious sounding, but I'm not complaining right now."

"Yeah, well, they've probably got all the alliance good health supplements built into them," Kaylee answered, looking at the ingredients list of the mini sandwiches, and then shrugging. "Food should be better when we land at the conference, right?"

"Oh, I'd be surprised if we don't get sumptuous banquets or buffet dinners the whole time," Simon said, smiling. "I hope you really enjoy it."

"Ehh." She opened up her chocolate bar and attacked it with some gusto. "That sort of thing is nice for a change - like the Shindig back on Persephone, but I don't know, might be feeling homesick for some down-home food by the time the conference ends." Simon nodded. "So **where** have you slept that's less comfortable than these chairs?"

"Well - the ones in the hospital on-call room when I was going through my intern year, back on Osiris, for one," Simon said. "Very severe wooden things - I don't know if they'd been put in specifically to torture us lowliest of the low or what. Residents got bunks, and occasionally we'd try to sneak into them to get a little decent rest when none of the Residents were around."

"Huh, okay."

"Yeah." There was some more silent munching. "But I do feel like I want to get some shut-eye after we've eaten, and I won't say no to the bunk, if... if it's available."

Kaylee grinned. "Half of it is - take it or leave it."

"Might as well, I suppose. If we're posing as a husband and wife, we may need to share a couple's bed when we get there." He considered for a moment. "No teasing, though - I do actually want to get some sleep."

"Teasing? Who, me?"

"Yes, you."

"Couldn't be."

Simon just shot her an unimpressed look. "As in letting your hands wander, or pushing - anything enticing - against me harder than is really necessary."

Exasperated, Kaylee rolled her eyes. "There are sleeping pills in the cupboard, too, I noticed, actually. Serious stuff. If you do want to sack out and get a few hours interrupted shuteye, then maybe you should take one."

"Hmm." Simon considered. "What if there's a crisis and we both need to be completely alert?"

"Oh, brother. The chances of something that bad happening are about a hundred thousand to one against, and the shock of losing any breathing air or whatever would probably be enough to wake you up anyway. But take it or don't, as you like. I just wanted to let you know that the option was there."

"Hmm... are you going to use one?"

"I think so, yes. If we're going to sleep on the way there, I feel like I might as well make it count."

Simon considered that silently until the junk food was all gone, with the wrappers fed into disposal, but when Kaylee dug into the cupboard and fetched out the bottle of sleeping pills, he held his hand out for one. They each swallowed one with water, and quickly arranged themselves on the bunk, Simon spooning her from behind. And it hardly seemed like even a minute before she finished drifting off to drea-

#

"You know, I don't think that we can keep saying 'hey you' and 'the other one', if you might be staying here for weeks," said Rickard to Book and Jayne. The three of them had been playing Tyzicha Odin for a few hands, while Juli worked on a protein modeling computer simulation on the other side of the cabin's spacious living room. "How about making up other names that we could use?"

"Hmm... don't you think that we've got enough alternate identities floating around?" Jayne muttered, and Rickard shrugged. Probably it didn't seem so bad to him. "Well, huh. I'll have to think about that one for a little while, anyway."

"How about calling me Don?" Book suggested with the trace of a smile.

"Sure, Don." Rickard considered the cards. "It's your lead."

"Oh, right." After a moment, Book put down the King of beasts. "Marriage."

"Tza-jiao hoe-tze lah doo-tze" Jayne grumbled. He'd made a modest contract on the basis of the points for his marriage of worlds, but making a new suit trumps would probably keep him from getting enough capture points to make good on one-seventy points. "I figured that if anybody would call a new marriage against me, it would be the hostage. Oh well."

"There's little loyalty when it comes to cards," Book said mildly.

Eventually the hand was settled up - thirty-five points in captures and forty for the beast marriage to Book, thirty to Rickard, and fifty-five in captures plus one hundred for the world marriage to Jayne, which meant that he'd lose one hundred and seventy for failing to make good on his mortgage. "Okay, that's my fault for reaching beyond my grasp," he groaned as Book put down the scores, this one failure overtilting the minor gains he'd made over the first three hands and putting him underwater. "And call me Charles - so you can put a big C at the top of that column."

"Charles?" Book repeated with a trace of a smile. "Very well." He marked his own score with a D as well.

The card game continued for a few hours, with Jayne never really having a chance to catch up. Book did somewhat better, but in the end could not match the incisive mind of their captive, who seemed to have no problem weighing the odds of a needed queen being found in the blind, or the best way of managing his trumps in the play of tricks. "Well, I think I'll have a coffee cream as a late night snack with my pills, and then turn in," he said. "Darling?"

"This thing will keep me up late," she muttered darkly. "Estimating an hour and forty minutes until this batch is complete, and then I'll take a few minutes to work out the next one and leave it running all night. With the workstation _locked up_, just in case."

"Well, if it'll be that long, then would you like to join me in having a drink?" Rickard asked mildly. Juli looked up and her face softened into something that might almost have been a smile.

"Okay I guess."

"What kind of meds are you on, anyway?" Jayne asked suspiciously.

"Nothing too serious," Juli answered as she got up from the computer desk. "When he was fourteen, his father got a particularly nasty kind of leukemia. Cancer in the bone cells that manufacture blood, right?"

"Yes," Book said mildly. "I do know what leukemia is."

"I actually hadn't," Jayne admitted. "Heard the term, knew it was bad. Might have made the connection with cancer, or not." He considered for a moment. "Blood comes out of your bones? For serious?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that, actually," Juli admitted, half-choking down a giggle. "But the blood cells that carry oxygen and fight disease - yes, they're made in the marrow inside your bones." She shook her head and returned to the subject. "Rickard had his genes tested, and he carries a factor that increases the chance of developing leukemia or lymphoma himself by a substantial amount. So he's on a kind of a protein therapy, designed to keep that gene inactive, so that he has no higher risk of cancer than any other man."

"Interesting," Book said. "How do you stay supplied with the pills?"

"They keep just about forever - I've got a carton half-full, with still a year's supply in it," Rickard told him with a smile. "We get refills delivered up from Jantor, that's a small town, around nine thousand people, a hundred miles to the south of us."

"Alright," Book said, and held up his hand slightly when Jayne was about to ask some other question.

"What do you expect in terms of the sleeping arrangements?" Juli asked Book directly. "Is one of you going to be staying up through the night on watch, to make sure that neither of us try to kill you, or slip away."

"I don't think that'll be necessary," Book mentioned.

"On the other hand," Jayne put in - well, maybe it's the ship's schedule getting to me, but I just don't feel at all tired." He grinned a big grin that was just slightly scary. "I'll probably prowl around all night; build myself a house of cards or something. Won't disturb your sleep none, I promise."

"What can I do with the boy?" Book said, sliding into the role of 'good cop' with no trouble at all. "They never want to go to bed at a reasonable time." Rickard laughed appreciatively. "In any event - I noticed that there were several beds available throughout the building - what would your own preference be?"

Rickard then shot Juli a look, and she squirmed uncomfortably under it for a moment. "We don't really have a fixed arrangement ourselves, but... I'll be in the master room."

"As will I," Rickard agreed.

"If none of this had happened," Juli, as Rickard started to prepare the drinks, "I might have been on my way to the door right now, tired from walking all day... and very glad to see you again, darling."

"Well, in that case... I can take the convertible couch, if that's alright," Book suggested. "That's probably less intrusive than using the facilities in your work spaces, yes?"

"Sure, whatever you like best," Rickard said. Juli nodded - probably in response to Book's question instead of her husband's blanket approval. Book looked over at Jayne.

"I can sleep anywhere," he muttered, "and don't see any particular need to go bunk down in one of the laboratories... Don, would you mind sharing the convertible, in shifts?" There had been a pause before Jayne used his assumed name.

"No, come on, Charles, no need for that," Juli said, shuddering slightly. "There is an actual guest room, and somebody might as well use it."

"Oh, alright then."

"You're well known as hermits," Book pointed out. "What do you use a guest room for?"

"You know, he asked me something like that, when I insisted on putting one in the cabin that we were building out way in the middle of nowhere so that we could be alone together," she said, nodding her head towards Rickard. "I didn't have an answer then, so maybe the reason all along was: For the convenience of the armed gang that would come along and steal our identities."

She grabbed a small glass flute of blue liquid, spun around on her heel, and walked to the far corner of the room. Rickard raised an eyebrow in surprise, and Book decided that maybe they'd better give the Marens their space. "Come on, Charles."

"Oh, okay." But Jayne insisted on hanging around well within earshot - not that anywhere in the cabin was really too far away to let something be heard.

#

Inara woke in her shuttle feeling bright and full of energy, which she supposed meant that a life of crime was having a positive effect on her in some way. According to the briefing from Wash, they would be entering a parking orbit, where Mal would join her in shuttle one and they'd fly down to the surface, around mid-afternoon, perhaps 1420 ship's time, with a final arrival of 1510 at the mansion's landing field, which would be much later in the day by Bellerophon local time.

After sponging herself carefully down and dressing, she still didn't feel particularly hungry, so headed forward to the cockpit. Wash wasn't there, but as she was heading back down the crew's hall, he emerged out of the ladder-hole that led down to his shared bunk. "Good morning, fair companion. How goes it?"

"Fairly well, as far as I can tell." Wash headed back up to the controls, so she followed him uncertainly. "Was just wondering how things were doing in terms of our trip."

"Quite well," Wash assured her eagerly. "I stayed up at the controls last night until I caught a brief sensor lock off the Maren's gravity sled, and then corrected off in another direction. That's why I slept somewhat late. Hope you weren't too startled to come here and not see anybody."

"No, not really," Inara said. "I was wondering if somebody should check on the engine room, just to make sure that everything was doing okay without Kaylee's special touch."

"I think that Zoe's doing her best to cover, and of course Kaylee did go over everything before she left, just in case," Wash said. "But you can take a look yourself and see if you spot something that Zoe missed, sure."

"Okay, I guess that I will," Inara said. "The ship seems rather empty, doesn't it, going somewhere with just the five of us on board."

"Yeah, I suppose it does," Wash agreed. "Of course, I was the fourth to sign on, so maybe it's just a bit like the old days - before we had permanent passengers, or a companion renting out a shuttle... or Jayne." Inara smiled slightly.

"I haven't had breakfast yet," she mentioned. "Do you want me to grab you something from the kitchen?"

"Hmm, actually, yeah, thanks for offering," he said. "Some of those crunchy yellow things, and the closest thing you can rustle up to being actual coffee!"

After bringing up some food and beverages for the two of them, Inara asked Wash if he'd mind her sitting in the co-pilot's chair. "Oh, of course not. You're probably the best qualified person for it, honestly."

"Alright." She took a moment about arranging herself. "So, what's the plan for getting us, and the engine, out of Dodge safely? Wherever Dodge is? I gather that you don't want to get Serenity too close to the mansion."

"No, for two reasons - that if somebody actually makes a visual identification of a Firefly '03, it'll probably make our escape the harder, and also, they just might have some kind of defensive systems that would have a serious effect on us - ground to air missiles, for instance."

"But would they use them?" she asked. "So there's an unidentified vehicle approaching the conference site - that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a threat."

"Not coming, no," Wash said. "Leaving, they probably have a notion that we'd be up to no good - and would probably rather see the engine wrecked than let us get away with it."

"Alright, so?"

"Actually, this is where it gets awkward," Wash mentioned. "The best plan I've heard has the shuttle as the immediate getaway vehicle - for you and Mal, Simon, Kaylee, and the engine. That's not really enough to put it overweight, even. If you can leave without getting shot or anything, fly a few miles away from the mansion, and then we should be able to rendezvous with you. Looking for a small shuttle, they might not make the leap to suspecting a firefly climbing up into orbit."

"Right, it does make some sense," she said. "But my shuttle had better not get wrecked because of this."

"It's not yours, you're just renting it," Wash said, but Inara glared him down. "We could use the other one, maybe."

"No..." Inara tilted her head from side to side a moment, and then shook that thought off. "It wouldn't seem right somehow. I'm arriving here as a Companion, and that is _my_ shuttle. There might be nobody who would tell the two of them apart, and probably nobody from the conference is going to see inside it, but we'll still go with the one I rent. This is what I get myself in _for_, when I volunteer for a new crime."

"Not all the time, but yeah, it's the sort of thing that might come up at any time," Wash admitted with a sigh. "And I'm sorry for saying that, that the shuttle wasn't yours. I might not have the papers for Serenity, but I know how I'd feel if somebody said that about myself and her."

"Don't worry about it," Inara told him. "So, when all of this cashes in and we're rich, what are you going to do with your cut?"

#

"Wake up honey." Kaylee blinked her eyes, groaned at the brightness of the light outside them, and retreated behind her eyelids again for a moment. "We've got another whiteboard session in less than half an hour."

"Huh?" Confused, Kaylee reverted to basics. She was lying on a comfortable bed, and there was a man with a familiar voice next to her. Simon. Right... with that, the memory of her heist plan, the Maren's cabin on Whittier, and leaving with Simon in the gravity sled came back to her. Of course.

But there were a few things that didn't seem to quite add up. For one thing, she and Simon were lying in a different position - she was facing Simon's hair, spooning him from behind, not being the spoonee. But she was still lying on her left side - had they switched sides of the cot in the night? That didn't seem to make much sense. And the mattress of the cot didn't feel quite right. For that matter - hadn't she been wearing clothes when they went to bed? And hadn't he?

That much of a realization had been enough to get her to sit up in the bed and force her eyes wide open - when they forced themselves closed despite all that she could do, Kaylee rubbed her knuckles into them and tried again. They definitely were _not_ inside the ship - it was a fancy room, with tiled white walls, a desk and other fancy appliances around the richly covered bed. (Although her bottom half was still under the sheets, it was quite evident that she was definitely bare otherwise - and the same for Simon.)

"Okay, just what did I say to get that reaction?" Simon asked with one of those slightly self-mocking smile, sitting up halfway himself and reaching out to take her hand in his. "Is this a case of delayed morning after regret, or something?"

"Huh?" Kaylee decided to tackle the situation from the principle of first things first. "Where - where are we? Is this our room at the conference?"

"Well... yes. Where else would it be?" He considered. "Did you have a dream about being back on Serenity, or home on Three Hills?"

"No, at least, not really. The - the last I remember, we were still on our way here, in the gravity sled."

Simon blinked in surprise. "Really? Totally a blank? But - but we've been here for nearly a week and a half now." His face had a gravely concerned look. "What could this mean, amnesia in this circumstance? You weren't exposed to any radiation or energy discharge yesterday as far as I know - maybe security dosed you with something - but a memory loss drug doesn't make sense either. They can't have thought that would make us give ourselves away, and if we're already under suspicion there'd be easier ways to..."

"I have other questions," Kaylee told him. "You and me, did we... you know? I mean, I thought that the sleeping arrangements were going to be somewhat less - bare. Even if it looked suspicious."

"Well, yeah, but since we... oh, yes, I guess that would be what you were trying to ask about," he realized. "Yes, we - we did consummate the pretend marriage - but not for the sake of staying under cover. I... I suppose it was just a case of mutual attraction being given a chance to express itself naturally. I... I'm not sure what you were expecting or planning on, before you lost your memories of our affair, but I was just enjoying myself tremendously, using the excitement and energy of a new physical relationship to feed into our little playacting engagement, and giving you what seemed like an appropriate mix of closeness and space, waiting for you to send another signal." He shook his head. "Guess that won't really get us anywhere now."

"No." Kaylee slid back up the bed so that their faces lined up, with her being somewhat above him because she was still sitting up more, and kissed him tenderly. "Glad to know I was making things fun for you, and I guess the same probably went vice versa. (Especially if I was satisfied for it to keep happening again and again.) But there isn't time to worry about that, or my memory, at the moment, right? Assuming that we weren't dilly-dallying, by fooling around together right now, what would we be doing?"

"Shower of course, and dressing," Simon said, his eyes twinkling with a kind of passion that she'd never really seen there before. He pointed to a door that Kaylee hadn't seen before - a bathroom of their own? Ooh, what luxury. "Then probably going to the Paris hall for a continental breakfast."

"Alright." She pulled him off the bed, and delighted, he led the way to the bathroom, Kaylee still clinging onto his hand. They climbed into the shower-tub together and he twisted the shiny silver knob - but instead of hot, (or cold, or lukewarm,) water, a cloud of tiny little blue moths emerged from the nozzle. "What the heck?"

And - and once again Kaylee sat bolt upright in bed, eyes wide open, but this time she was back where she should have been - that cramped narrow bunk in the gravity sled, _behind_ Simon, who was still fast asleep, with the lights turned down low except for a few key indications on the pilot's screen. It had all been... been one heck of a dream. Even though the amnesia stuff had been a bit scary, there were definitely parts of her mind and body that regretted the notion of Simon and herself together wasn't real.

The sleeping pills had mentioned that strange and vivid dreams could be a side-effect. Boy, they hadn't been kidding. She checked the pilot's screen once, still nothing that seemed like trouble, and then was yawning again. Even the fact that she didn't want to let herself in for another dream like that one probably couldn't keep her awake, so Kaylee crawled back onto the bed. Just managed to clue in that she hadn't taken the same position, but was face to face with Simon, but by that point she was really too tired to care.


	4. Chapter 4

Book woke up while it was still dark outside the cabin windows, turned on the smallest light that he could find in the living room, and immediately settled down to his usual morning devotionals. After a short prayer, and pondering what the Lord Jesus would think of the scrape that he'd gotten into, he moved on to the next step of a reading from the Holy Book. At first he'd been about to go looking for his book bag, then remembered that it hadn't been next to the convertible couch when he'd gone to bed last night. He'd started recited Psalm 23 from memory instead of making a big deal over looking for it. However, just after passing through the valley of the shadow of death, his eye caught a shelf of antique books in the corner of the room, and he decided to get up and take a look, hoping that the Maren's wouldn't feel offended by his presumption. A simply bound volume reading 'King James translation, Old and New Testament' caught his eye, so he pulled it out and opened the Codex.

"My son, forget not my law; but let thy heart keep my commandments."

He almost blinked in surprise at the verse that his eyes first fixed upon. Was the Lord Most High actually trying to tell him something? Checking around the margins of the page, he managed to orient himself - Proverbs, chapter 3 - and this line was verse one. Well, first, what did it mean or imply for him? The laws of God were not the laws of man or of the Alliances that men formed - but had his heart kept the commandments well? Sighing, Derrial Book read through the rest of the passage, not rushing, but breaking off to consider an implication after each verse or sometimes even in the middle of one.

He had just gotten to the bit about the Lord God scorning scorners and giving grace to the lowly when the full overhead lights clicked on, and he looked to the door in surprise. "Oh - Good morning, Don," Rickard said. "I... I don't mean to disturb you if you're busy, just wanted to let you know that I'll be starting breakfast presently."

"Thank you - you're very kind, considering the errand that brings us here," Book said honestly.

"No, come on - I was in the mood to make pancakes, and bacon, fruit salad, hash browns, toast, and sausages anyway. Once you've got started, it's no extra bother to prepare more of each. And I didn't really think that you'd threaten to shoot us just to get your share."

"Well, no, probably not, though I wouldn't really put it past Charles," Book answered. "I really hope you didn't mind that I raided your bookshelf."

"Oh, certainly not. What caught your eye for early morning reading?"

"Well, **the** Book." He showed the cover and the spine, though at that distance Rickard might not be able to make out anything identifying. Derrial hesitated for just a second before continuing - Malcolm had enjoined him to not reveal anything personal to the Marens, especially his status as a shepherd... but he could not quite bear to hide entirely the fact that he was a person of faith. Not all who believed in God, who made him a part of their lives, joined the ministry so directly, after all... and Rickard would hardly suspect someone holding him prisoner of being a Shepherd of the Lord's flock. "Just doing a morning bible study - couldn't find my own books, so I borrowed yours."

"Perfectly all right. I'll just give you as much time as you need."

"Thank you. Almost done, I suspect. Should be there to put the bacon on by the time you've mixed up batter."

"Excellent."

Derrial considered the chapter a bit longer, and then reflected that possibly the book had just fallen open more or less at random. Proverbs was good stuff, but this section was really just what the name implied - a collection of maxims, little jewels in themselves, but not forming any greater structure easily. If the words of the Lord to him, today, were here, then he'd have to listen harder to hear their true meaning, and he couldn't simply sit all day and wait for the wisdom of God to come to him, so he went out to the kitchen to help out with breakfast.

"I wonder if Charles really did stay up on watch all night," he mused out loud as Juli entered the kitchen, wearing a blue dressing gown with black silhouettes decorating it here and there, and her brown hair pulled back into a single tail down at her neck.

"I think I heard him up and moving very early this morning, indeed," Rickard said affably. "Just before I got up myself."

"Then maybe he didn't let himself turn in until he saw that I had my light on," Derrial realized. "Interesting. He does take certain parts of his work very seriously."

"I **am** curious about your ordinary line of work," Juli said, as she stacked fruit from the refrigerating crisper onto a wooden cutting board. "I realize that there are certain things that you can't tell us lest we could identify you to the authorities, but still - robbing scientific conferences can't be all that you do, all the time. There are hardly enough of them, even if you go to all of this trouble for each one."

Derrial laughed himself, splitting his attention between the bacon and the sausage, spread out on different halves of a huge rectangular griddle. "There is really nothing that we do 'all the time.' I'm constantly surprised at the sort of things that... that we end up in the middle of."

"Can't you tell us a few stories?" Juli insisted. "Something that wouldn't really identify anybody. You can change names to protect the guilty."

"We'll see, but after breakfast is over," he said.

"Alright," she said, sighing. "Oh, you know what would be great? Waffles. We still have that contraption that Sarah Reese and that lawyer friend of hers got us as a wedding gift. Oh!"

"Contraption?" Derrial asked, confused.

"It's a waffle iron - but Juli tends to think that waffles come out of boxes with the blue sun logo on them in the freezer section of a store," Rickard said, chuckling.

"Oh!" Juli repeated, with somehow a layer of extra emphasis on the word. Rickard turned to look at her. "I - where did they leave that copy of the list?"

"Which list?" Rickard asked.

"The list of conference attendees?" Book asked. "I think it's on one of the end tables in the living room. Do you think that one of the people you just mentioned are on it?"

Juli nodded, and Book immediately abandoned the meat to go and fetch the second printout slip that had been provided for them. "Sarah Reese can't be at the conference - she died about a year back, remember honey? She accidentally got exposed to activated prions because one of her lab hands wasn't following proper procedures in the laboratory." He made a brr-brr sound. "It was very unfortunate."

"No, not Sarah. I... sheesh, I can't even remember the name, but if I look at that list."

"But you just said he was a lawyer! What would he be doing at a conference like this? Even if he was there in - well, in a legal capacity, he wouldn't likely be listed as an invitee."

"I'm telling you..." By this point Book was back with the paper, and he handed it to her and immediately went back to the range to check on the meat. A few of the sausages had started to stick. "Flander Sheldon. There can't be many with _that_ name, in the entire 'verse. Maybe... maybe he went into the sciences after we knew him. People have made career changes like that before."

"But they don't reach the highest rungs of the profession in just a few years after making the change, and Bentley isn't inviting anyone who hasn't reached the highest rungs in science. If he had the... the _talent_ to get that far, that fast, then he simply wouldn't have chosen the law first. I don't believe that."

"I... I don't know, then," Juli groaned, waving the large chopping knife around dramatically in her left hand, while still holding the printout with her right and glancing back at it. "But I'm not going to let this go without at least looking into it. Can - can somebody research the name on the Cortex?"

"Certainly," Book said. "I think I will make the first inquiries myself, though - and _after_ breakfast is finished."

"Your friends might need to know this."

"Perhaps - but we're not contacting them. That isn't the plan." Book sighed. "I'll be good to have something more than a possible coincidence of names to tell them if they check in tonight, though."

"Alright." Juli put the printout down and sank to her chair.

"Could you do me one favour, darling?" Rickard asked.

"Yes?"

"Either start chopping fruit again, or put the knife down?"

"Oh!" She stared at the knife for a moment, and then returned to the task at hand.

The waffles were excellent with a little bit of genuine honey.

#

"Alright, so if you manage to fuse four hydrogen nuclei together, you wouldn't get helium, you'd get Beryllium four," Simon rephrased the points that Kaylee had been drilling him on for quite a while. "Beryllium four isn't anything close to stable, so it would... would beta-decay twice, and leave you with helium four, which is very stable, and in fact harmless, except for giving you an annoying high-pitched voice if you breathe it directly."

"Right," Kaylee said, smiling at how he put that. She hadn't mentioned the helium voice herself.

"So some of the power from the hydrogen to helium fusion can go to separating more hydrogen from the water," he reported. "Oxygen from the water and helium from the fusion are expelled from the engine. So far, so good. But beta decay usually involves the emission of high-energy particles that can be fairly dangerous to people. Baty engines don't give off that radiation, so somehow they've found a perfect way to absorb or neutralize it."

"Okay, so... but those beta particles are real physical things, and they can't just get wished away," Kaylee said. "Conservation of charge, conservation of spin and so on. You know what I mean by that?"

"Everything has to be somewhere," Simon agreed. "I think I got it. Wait a second... charge - isn't a beta particle negative charge? An unbound electron?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Four hydrogen nuclei - four protons, have a charge of plus four. A helium nucleus has a charge of plus four. _Adding_ negative charges to the system doesn't make things balance."

"Ooh, whoops - good catch," Kaylee admitted, chuckling. "It must be an anti-beta - a free positron. Does that give you the hint of how to balance the books?"

"Um - I'm not sure it does," Simon said, frowning. "I was thinking that you could send the beta particles into other nearby nuclei - like the oxygen from the water... but what's most oxygen?"

"Look it up," Kaylee said with a little smile. "It's right there in the computer - try the narrow table of nuclides... no, that doesn't have distribution data, does it? But you'll want to have it available. Look up the oxygen article."

"Hmm..." Simon accessed the files in the physics cyclopedia that she'd indicated and considered the results. "Ninety-nine and a quarter percent O 16. So if that nucleus captures a positron, an anti-beta..." He frowned, trying to work it out. "It'll go up by one spot on the periodic table, without changing its atomic weight?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"Which gets us - um, one up from oxygen is... fluorine. That's nasty stuff, very poisonous, especially free fluorine atoms. And is F sixteen - you know, stable? Right, check the listing." Simon accessed more data. "Doesn't look like it. The only naturally occurring stable isotope is nineteen. So much for my brilliant notion."

"Yeah, it's a wrong track," Kaylee admitted. "There are stable nuclei that could take a positron hit and stay safely stable - but they're all heavier elements, further up the chart. And the problem for something like a Baty engine, are that you won't have a steady supply of heavy elements under field conditions, even something like iron you can't keep feeding into the unit, not really."

"Okay, so then - what? Do we have any idea what they're doing with those free positrons? They can't be just sweeping them under the rug, though I suppose it's possible that nobody but the Alliance scientists know..."

"No, it's not quite _that_ much of a mystery," Kaylee said, laughing. "What's happened is that you're focused a bit too narrowly on the nucleus. It's important what goes on there, definitely - but if you look only at nuclei, you're not seeing something important."

"Huh?" And then, things started to fall into place for Simon. "Of course! The nuclei are the hearts of atoms, which have their own electrons somewhere nearby - impossible to say where, by Heisenberg indeterminacy, but probably not too far. All normal matter already balances up in charge that way. The four hydrogen nuclei come with one electron each, but the helium atom only needs two to stay balanced. Our two positrons could collide with the extra two, releasing some extra energy... doesn't quantum physics make it problematic to arrange that much lepton particle-antiparticle annihilation to order, though? If we can't tell where the electron is, or the anti-electron - how do we make sure that they collide?"

"That part, I couldn't tell you much about," Kaylee admitted ruefully. "Maybe Rickard's notes about the work he did on the similar J12 local power processor will help. I don't think that everybody coming to this conference with a nuclear physics background will know the details, though."

"Okay, so - did I do well, teach?" Simon winked at her. "Can I press the whizz-bang button and take a break?"

"The whizz-bang button?" she repeated, laughing.

"I'll take that as a yes," he said, minimizing the files that he'd called up on the display screen and pressing a small purple icon in the corner. A number of funny sound effects rang out, along with a display of fireworks that were apparently shooting down balloons. "You can press yours too - you did a great job as a teacher."

"I have one too? Where was it... ohh." Kaylee tapped her icon, and got a display of a rocket taking off from a mountainside, racing over the surface of a barren moon, and plunging into some sort of mysterious vortex in space, to the appropriate sound effects. "Clever. Is it different every time?"

"Not really, but I think this version has about a dozen variants, cycled through with a little random variation now and then. Childish, yes, but it's a cheap way to give yourself a reward for your accomplishments."

"Cool," Kaylee agreed, and twisted her chair about somewhat to face Simon's. He followed suit. "Yes, you did do well - I realize that it's a bit basic in terms of what's probably going to be talked about in this conference, but I didn't know how else to start than drilling you on the fundamentals."

"No, I completely understand," Simon said, reaching out to the middle of the bunk, where they'd put some snacks - far enough away to be out of convenient reach while the two of them were studying, but not far away as to absolutely require someone to stand up and walk around the little cabin. "In a weird way, it seems strange to hear you talking about the technical details of engines and nuclear processes... I mean, I guess I always suspected that you knew your stuff that way, but when it comes to Serenity, you always seem so down home, and - well, 'holistic.'"

"Huh?" Kaylee took a package of puffed nuts from him and tore it open. "Like the shepherd?"

"Oh, no, it doesn't mean quite the same thing as 'holy' - more like, natural and instinctive. Looking at the way the sum total of a thing behaves instead of getting bogged down on the details."

"Oh, okay!" Kaylee agreed cheerfully. "Yeah, that's the way I guess I like to relate to a ship too, as if it were alive, but I know that it literally isn't, and that sometimes nothing is going to help but understanding the implications of Boyle's law in the hydraulic systems - or the details of the nuclide interactions in a fusion reaction." She chuckled. "Some of this stuff I learned back in grade school, actually - the schools in my area stressed science in the curriculum for everybody... and then I learned some more over the Cortex after Mal signed me on, because I was so nervous that something was going to happen that I couldn't handle, and I'd get us all blown up, or badly hurt, or strand the ship somewhere in the middle of an important job like Bester did."

"Bester!" Simon said suddenly, pointing a finger at her as he sipped from a small bottle of something green. "Bester. For the second time of asking I put it to you, Kaylee Frye... what exactly happened with Bester, and Mal hiring you?"

"Umm!" She shook her head in consternation. "I... I think I'll hold out for the third time of asking, since that's the way it always goes in the stories... and just what's in that stuff?"

"Hmm." Simon considered it. "It says that it's Jabra water, and that it's made from fungus grown on Muir..."

"Give it here," Kaylee ordered, and even tapped her foot until Simon did hand over the bottle. "I've heard a' Jabra. Really powerful booze, no matter what it's truly made from. _No_ booze while we're studying." She snickered. "Wouldn't want you to take off your clothes and start reciting verse, even if there isn't a statue for you to climb on here."

"Oh, alright," Simon muttered. "I do think some of what you were mistaking for the effects of alcohol was just natural high spirits."

"Probably true - it couldn't a hit you that hard anyway. But still... we'll take a toast from this when we pull off the heist."

"How are you going to keep it until then?" Simon pointed out. "The lid was one of those easy-twist-offs that are next to impossible to put back on again."

"Huh." Kaylee avoided the question by just putting the bottle on the floor well out of the way for the time being. "So, what do you think I'd most need to know to cover for Juli?"

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "Bio-sciences are probably going to be in the back seat for this symposium anyway, on account of its subject matter, and she couldn't give me many specifics. The main research breakthrough that Juli Clarkson-Maren had to her credit before disappearing with Rickard was the co-development of an automated biochemical 'factory' capable of assembling DNA and RNA code matching arbitrary input strings, and since she retreated to that cabin, she seems to have been working on ways to test the effects of various enzymatic proteins on the development of lingual engrams in the brain during childhood."

"Wow," Kaylee muttered.

"Did you understand any of that?"

"Maybe half."

"We can go through it in more detail later," Simon told her with a smile. "In the meantime, let's start with something a little bit more on the button, and talk about the effects of radiation on living things. Sound good?"

"Yeah, fine place to start," Kaylee agreed. "I learned it by the gun metaphor."

"Okay, I'm not sure if I've heard that one," Simon admitted, smiling. "Care to go over it for me?"

"Well, because you've got particles of different weights involved, the impact and type of damage are determined by that, as well as the energy level. Alpha particles are a bit like catapult shot - heavy, but not really coming at you that hard. Of course, if you get an alpha source inside you, you're toast, but otherwise they can't penetrate far."

"Alright, I'm with you so far. What about beta particles?"

"More like a bow and arrow - not nearly as heavy, but they go deeper and cause more damage. And gamma rays would be like lasers - no weight to them at all, but they burn narrow and deep."

"Hmm." Simon considered. "That's alright for an overview. How about we get into more specifics, especially for treatment? I think that patching somebody up for alpha rays the same way you would for a catapult shot wouldn't work too well."

"Well, no, of course not. Go ahead." Kaylee turned her seat back to the forward position and waved at the screen.

#

"Here you go," Zoe said, handing Mal a straight green stick that looked like an ordinary data pen. "Tap it twice here on the far end to tell us that you're close and Wash should come in for a landing. Tap it twice here near the middle, and we'll meet you partway to the conference site."

"And if we tap twice on the bottom end?" Inara asked.

"Emergency warning," Mal told her, "of course. Everything's going wrong, and if they don't hear from us more directly, they should head back to Whittier, pick up Jayne, Book, and head for the black."

"What, no rescue mission?" Zoe said.

"Do you really want to go up against a good two dozen Alliance security guards?" Zoe just shrugged.

"Alright I guess," Inara sighed. "But the next time I volunteer to help you people out on a heist... could you please slap me really hard across the face and tell me to talk a bit more sense?"

"Don't say that if you don't mean it," Zoe answered immediately.

"Hello River," Mal said, nodding gravely at the little girl who was walking over towards the shuttle dock from the cargo bay stairs. "Don't worry about Simon - we're going to bring him back, safe and sound."

"I'm not worried about him," River said softly. "Just wish that I could go down to the conference myself. Mycroft Sheldon's last paper about the implications of alternating current standardization in standalone nuclear generation equipment in this past year's winter edition of Atomic Energy Quarterly was fascinating. If they make progress on the miniaturization front, I expect that he'll push for the Backpack Baty to switch to direct voltage."

Zoe, Inara, and Mal all exchanged looks. "You know, we can probably bring her along as a child prodigy," Mal muttered. "She'll dazzle anybody there with techno-babble, if nobody gets her started on cows instead."

"Maybe another time," Zoe told him, shaking her head. "Now get going."

"Alright. Bye River," Inara said, and led the way into her richly decorated vessel. Mal sat in the main chamber, awkwardly waiting at the tea table as Inara separated shuttle one from Serenity and put it on course for Bellerophon. "You know, you can come up here and sit in the co-pilot's seat if you promise not to touch the flight controls," she told Mal at that point. "It'll probably be less awkward than..."

"If I **promise** not to touch the flight controls?" Mal crowed. "Oh, that's rich. This is still my shuttle, you know that. Just because you're the lessor..."

"Serenity is your ship too, but that doesn't mean I'd feel comfortable knowing that you were steering her," Inara said. "You have a great many strengths, Mal; I've come to learn that over the time we've known each other. Acceptable piloting skill is not one of them."

Mal decided not to argue about that one. "Okay, should we maybe go over the layout of the Bentley building again, just to be sure that everyone's clear on the territory?"

"Very well." Inara tapped a few buttons, and the diagram that had been showing Bellerophon and its parent planet, Georgia, turned into a blueprint schematic. "The mansion is definitely large, with the term 'palace' not being entirely inappropriate as an alternate description. The main house is six stories high, with a floor plan of fifteen thousand square feet on each level, and there are substantial expansion wings to the north, south, and east. Badger's information indicates that the experimental laboratories are in the south wing, with lodging for invitees, brainstorming rooms, and press briefings in the central building."

"Right, so that's where we're going to be limited," Mal said, zeroing in on the key issue. "The credentials that you got for me won't let either of us into the south section - and that's where our objective will be. The disassembled Baty engine."

"Not completely disassembled," Inara corrected didactically. "If the guts of it were taken apart, I suspect it wouldn't be much good to Badger - he can guess what the parts are, and knows that they're all available on the open market. It's how they're all connected and adjusted to make the engine operational, along with the ability to experiment carefully and see what the results are."

"Well, yeah," Mal said. "Forgive me for employing a shorthand, instead of saying 'the engine that's all together except for its casing.'"

"Lazy speech patterns don't save any time if they're not accurate, Mal."

"But you knew what I meant... oh, never mind. I just thought of something else. The invitees who are going to be working in the south - people like Simon and Kaylee, under their fake identities - they'll be sleeping in the main building too?"

"That's what the plan seems to be. Obviously there'll be some need for security at the border between the two buildings. Probably they'll block everything off but one passageway, since the connection from the main building to the south wing is three stories high and more than a single room wide. Much too much to guard."

"Hmm... maybe there'll be some way to _unblock_ one of those routes without making it obvious," Mal mused. "I wish there weren't so many unknowns at this point."

"Yes, well, have you ever met Joseph Barons, from Eletia Island?"

"No, I..." Mal just caught himself. "I haven't had the pleasure. Remember taking a trip to Eletia a few summers back, though, to meet with the local historical society. Beautiful place, Jumped outta that pine tree house into the teardrop lake. Boy, that's a rush."

"Not a bad cover," Inara admitted. "Though I hope that you'd take the hint a bit quicker when we were there, and not have to cover the slip."

"What if Barons was there, would I need to change my answer in that case?" Mal asked.

"Hmm... we may need to work out a signal for that," Inara admitted. "And how did you know that bit about the tree house and jumping off it into the lake."

"You told me about that, months ago," Mal said, as if that were obvious.

"I did?"

"Yeah. One of the first times that we really talked much, after you came to join us. As I remember, there was Londinium gin involved in the weekend, and not just a little of it."

"Oh, right."

"Well, let's see... what else is there that we need to cover?" Mal asked, and Inara shrugged. "The mansion definitely looked pretty from the outside. Don't you have some fun facts on me about what style of architecture it is or who supervised the building?"

Inara laughed. "I guess I didn't think that was relevant."

"Does that mean you don't know, or just that you didn't want to say?"

"Don't know. You can look it up for yourself."

"Ehh." Mal pulled up an information query on the computer, and then seemed to think better of it. "I... I do appreciate your help on this thing, Inara, but I worry that you're getting too close to our dirty dealings, and you'll pay a price for it eventually. So I **will** slap you across the face next time if I have to, though I'd rather not and will probably start with telling you not to be so foolish first."

She smiled slightly. "Thanks for being concerned."

It was half a rebuke, and Mal felt it like her words were a slap across **his** face. "You... you weren't serious, back on the ship? More than anything else, you still don't want me or anybody else telling you what your business is?"

"Well, it's not that. Just... I **have** been involved in crime before this. In a weird way, that's how we met the first time, even if you don't know that part."

"Well, now I'm confused," Mal said. "I thought that you looked me up in Cara Dawn, because you'd seen my flyer about having a shuttle to rent, based off a freelance Firefly traveling between the border and the rim."

"True in a way, but certainly not the start of the story," Inara said. "There was Paquin, for instance. We didn't actually see each other on Paquin, but - you'd been hired by one of Niska's lackeys to steal a speck of Dubnium from the Carnival fireworks, yes?"

"Umm... Zoe and I, yes. What does any of this have to do with you?"

"I'd been hired by a man of... certain unusual talents, who was also after that same item. He was going to open negotiations with Niska after he'd gotten the Dubnium."

"And he hired you for what?" Mal asked. "Just as an appropriate escort, to help explain why he was on the moon at that time?"

"Would I have brought this up if that was all of it?" Inara asked, sighing. "No. I was in to help him out a bit more directly than that, though not to be there when he actually went for the target item. For one thing, I was supposed to help him make contact with one Barrett Thomas, who was supervising the special security detail, and..."

"Kaylee's old friend's sugar daddy!" Mal exclaimed, stunned. "Did - did you meet _her_ on Paquin? Kaylee?"

"Yes, a few times. I had lunch with her and Melany one time - and I think that 'sugar daddy' is a bit of an unfair characterization of Melany and Barrett's relationship, just because he came from more money than she did..."

"Never mind that," Mal said. "But Kaylee never told me about - no, she did mention that there had been another guy, when she went back to get more information out of Barrett before we made our move - and that guy showed up, gave me a nasty knife cut when the heist was going down. Was that your client?"

"Yes, I believe so," Inara said carefully. "I was there on that later occasion too, with Kaylee and Barrett - my client and I were double-teaming Barrett, and I think we gave Kaylee all the intelligence she needed between us. Including a data pen full of security codes, that I carefully pick-pocketed from Barrett, copied, and then Kaylee swiped the copy on me."

"Interesting." Mal said. "But when you showed up again on Ezra, even then she didn't admit to having met you before." Something new occurred to Mal. "Did you and Kaylee meet again on Ezra? Did she really give you the notion about renting my shuttle?"

"Yes," Inara admitted. "Don't give her a hard time about the secrecy thing. This was a long time ago, she hadn't been with Serenity long herself... and even so, I don't think she'd have hidden it from you under ordinary circumstances. Not sure what it was about me that inspired such unexpected loyalty in her, but..." she trailed off uncertainly.

"Well, yes, I'll have to think hard about if I even want to mention it to her," Mal said. "But thank **you** for telling me the truth, finally."

"Certainly."

There was yet another long awkward silent pause. "How much longer before we hit Bellerophon atmosphere?"

"I think that we already have," Inara said. "In a manner of speaking. We'll reach the turbulent zone in maybe two and a half minutes."

"Welcome, welcome," the well-dressed man said as Mal and Inara emerged from the shuttle onto an open landing field. Inara had picked a spot that would be hard to block off to prevent them from boarding or taking off again, without making it too immediately obvious. "You must be the exquisite Inara Serra, though descriptions of your loveliness pale before the reality. And I'm so pleased to meet your friend, umm..."

"Nathaniel Hammond," Mal offered, extending his hand for the person who he assumed to be their host. "I'm very happy that you could find a spot for me. Don't have a head for the math, but I've always been **so** excited about fusion science."

"Yes, quite."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," Inara agreed. "You would be Amos Bentley?"

"Just call me Bentley, please, everybody does," he told them both. "I **despise** my first name, but somehow it never seemed to be worth the effort of getting it legally changed, you know? Well, did you bring your things?" Mal lifted his hands, which each had suitcases in them. Inara was only carrying a small purse herself - most of her things were in the larger bag that Mal was hefting. "Well, come along now. You're among the last to make it, and we'll be sitting down to the opening dinner soon."

"Alright." As he led the way to the palace, Mal considered Bentley. For a fantastically rich scientist, he didn't seem very extreme in any obvious way - several inches shorter than Mal, not even as tall as Inara in her heels, growing a bit pudgy but not obviously running to fat. His skin was a rich brown, matched by what was left of his hair pretty closely, and he wore what seemed to be a bright blue leisure suit or something of the sort. Aside from a bit of flamboyance, he seemed grounded and friendly.

Inara started chatting excitedly to Bentley, asking about why he'd decided to organize the conference, and who from among the more famous invitees had responded. Mal couldn't tell if she was trying to elicit a remark about 'the incredibly reclusive Marens' or just gathering background information, or simply trying to blend in with his expectations for that matter. Mal should probably be trying to push the conversational ball himself, come to think of it, if he was trying to stay in character as a dilettante interested enough in the conference to broker an invitation through a Companion. "So, what's on the agenda? Will the actual experimentation start tomorrow morning?"

"Perhaps - or maybe you'd characterize it better as hands-on learning than serious experimentation," Bentley said expansively. "Especially when it comes to nuclear power systems, tinkering without a plan is a great recipe for disaster. A few specialists who haven't worked directly with anything like the Baty engine are going to be going through planned laboratory tutorials in order to get up to speed, as it were, while the rest of our brilliant minds start devising plans and possibilities on - well, not quite paper, as much fun as the alliteration would be. On whiteboards, and computer sketching programs, even detailed simulations."

"Fascinating," Mal agreed. "Will I be able to see any of this myself?"

"Well, as I believe Inara was supposed to explain to you," he pointed out, "you will not be allowed anywhere near the laboratories or the engine parts yourself, Mister Hammond. I had to make certain promises to the Alliance Nuclear Energy Regulatory Board simply to get this conference off the ground, and considering that you're a self-invited observer with no serious academic or scientific credentials, it simply wouldn't be permitted. You could watch laboratory sessions over the closed-circuit television, or perhaps attend a planning session in person, as long as you're careful to not speak unless granted leave by the participants."

"Alright," Mal said, choosing that submitting quietly to these restrictions would be better in the long run than complaining about them. "And is anything else planned for... tonight? After the dinner?"

Bentley grinned. "There's cocktail hour, and an optional gaming session. I happen to have a close relationship with important people in Blue Sun's digital recreations division, and so an advance beta copy of 'Unification war: Purple Heart' is available."

Mal instantly did his best to cover the queasiness he always felt when he heard about the battles that he'd taken part in being turned into entertainment titles by the victors. "Fantabulous."

Bentley kept rambling about this and that, covering the later agenda for the conference, his favourite games, other social events that would be available, and his architectural inspirations for the mansion, while leading them into the main house, and over to an elevator. He introduced them to several other people; some scientist guests, a few other socialite observers, and many of his household staff, who he often had to 'take a moment' with, but didn't seem at all inclined to turn the task of guiding them to their rooms over to a lower functionary and get back to doing something more important. The elevator only took them up one floor, and then travelled horizontally for maybe eighty feet as nearly as Mal could judge, before letting them out. The door was less than a minute's walk away, but Mal hadn't quite managed to keep track of the path that they'd taken, and there were no room numbers and few landmarks.

"The suite is lovely, Bentley," Inara volunteered after taking only the briefest of looks inside. "How long do I have to freshen up before dinner, and where will we need to find our way to?"

"Let's see..." Bentley checked his personal chrono, which wasn't on his wrist like normal but tucked into his pocket and had a soft red string attached to it. "After 1800 local time... I'm afraid it's only twenty-two minutes away, but nobody will mind if you're a bit late. And, I guess I had better head off and..."

"How do we get there?" Mal asked a bit more sharply. "Sorry, but - your house is so vast, a person could get lost in it, and I'd hate to have to bother your staff just to..."

"Oh, of course," Bentley fished in his pants pocket this time, producing a small black object that had a rounded point at both ends. "The Tarzed dining room," he announced clearly, holding it within a few inches of his mouth, and suddenly - a tracer of yellow light emerged from one of the points, arcing through mid-air and leading back down the hallway the way that they had come. "This will lead you there, or anywhere else you ask it for within the house, though it does need the destination to be phrased as it is listed in the database. Please use common sense and don't poke about someplace you should know they you aren't to go, and thanks." He handed the device to Mal, the yellow tracer of light shifting slightly to keep to the same overall destination, and hurried off - passing through the beam slightly, and making it dance about in an attempt to avoid him.

"Alright." Mal loitered in the doorway for another moment, hoping against hope that Simon and Kaylee would show up, and then had to admit that hope was futile. He closed the door, looked around for Inara - and couldn't immediately see her. "Inara?"

"I'll be in here for a few minutes," she called from behind another door, her words muffled by the sounds of running water. Ah, alright. Mal hefted up the suitcases again and brought them into what looked like the main bedroom. Only one bed, though it was a fancy one, fit for a king both by size and quality. Would it be better to stick to their own sides of the bed, or have someone look for a sofa in the rest of the suite? Mal stuck their bags on either side of the bed for now.

One thing was nagging at him. He had seen no trace of security at all - not before they landed, (well, except for a small alliance forces air car on the landing field,) and not even as they entered the mansion. Nobody had asked for their invitations or checked them for weapons.

They couldn't have omitted such verifications, though. Were the security arrangements so sophisticated as to be unnoticeable? That boded ill for their scheme, in all sorts of ways.

And, to speak of security... what about observation, here in their suite? Were they to be listened in on, even observed by camera and 'closed circuit television'? Would anyone think it odd that a rich man and a Companion would not engage in the act of sex? (To say nothing else of other peculiarities that might arise about their interactions.)

It wasn't that many minutes before Inara emerged from the bathroom - just long enough for Mal to find a drawing room and a couch there, (though not one that would be well suited as a spare bed.) Her dark hair was slicked back and somehow damp, but not completely drenched, and she wore only a black under-slip, with the gown that she'd landed in slung over her arm. "Alright, in," she ordered. "You do something to clean yourself up as best you like, and give me ten minutes to finish getting dressed."

Mal shrugged and filed on into the richly fitted bathroom.


	5. Chapter 5

"We shouldn't have come early," Kaylee whispered in Simon's ear. "I never like coming to a partly beforehand and waiting for things to start."

"Well, what makes you think in terms of it not having started?" Simon replied, a bit more loudly but still trying to not be overheard. "Just because the host hasn't gotten up on that stage and made a speech, or the main course getting served out?"

"Yeah, that," she answered. "Or even appetizers getting served out would help." Simon went and pointed off behind her, and she turned to look in that direction. "Oh. Well, them getting here would help."

"We're not in a very densely populated part of the floor," he reminded her, which was true, and was something that they had both felt grateful for. However, with his words Simon arguably jinxed them, because only a few minutes a trio of stately, more-than-middle-aged oriental ladies stepped near to the table that they had planted themselves at and bowed.

"I would not wish to intrude on your time, but would you perhaps be Mister and Missus Maren?" the rightmost lady asked in a melodic voice.

"Miz Juli Maren," Kaylee said, with a fairly good imitation of the real Juli Maren's acerbic snap. "So pleased to meet you."

"You and your husband honour the conference with your presence, Miz Maren," the next lady said, "especially we of Bei Zhing Analyticals, who have laboured for years to refine your discoveries."

"My, umm... my discoveries?" Simon blurted out.

"No, I regret if my associate was not clear," the last lady intoned. "It is your wife's development of the genetic code machine that we are seeking to improve."

"Wow, really," Kaylee said. "Thanks - it's always nice to know that the work is continuing, though that... machine wasn't all my work. May I ask your names?"

"Certainly. I am Anara Liu, and attending with me are my sister Jian Doe, and our long-time colleague Janet Wing."

"Well, it's so nice to meet you... oh," Kaylee broke off in midsentence as Simon kicked her a bit emphatically under the table.

"Honey, haven't you told me about the medical work that these ladies have done in massive radiation burn reconstruction?" Simon fed her the hint shamelessly. "It's fascinating stuff... I'm not sure I knew that they were building on your own research."

"Well, I didn't want to sound my own horn or anything," Kaylee muttered uncomfortably.

"A most noble attitude," Janet told her. "Well, I believe that we are being encouraged to take our seats, so we shall leave you to..."

"Have you been assigned seats elsewhere that you have to go to?" Simon asked. "There's no sign of anybody else over here, and I would hope that we..."

"Regrettably, the Wrime brothers have already insisted upon our company," Jian told him. "Perhaps there are still two seats free at their table? I am sure that they would be fascinated to meet both of you..."

"No, it appears that will not be possible on this occasion," Anara cut her sister off. "Perhaps another time." And they hurried off toward a knot of people halfway across the room.

Perhaps that was for the best, Simon thought to himself as their table filled up with people who didn't really express an interest in either Kaylee or himself, even after Kaylee had introduced herself and him in order to be polite. Some appeared to be servitors in Bentley's household who weren't needed to prepare or serve dinner, and had asked to attend. Others were local researchers who had worked with Bentley many times before. Simon suspected that their host might have arranged to surround the hermits with people who he could trust to not overwhelm them with questions and attention that they weren't well prepared to handle.

"Thank you, everybody, for coming to my little scientific get-together," Bentley announced from the head table, to a muted swell of cheers and laughs. "Hopefully we'll get some good work done here over the next twelve days, and also have a reasonably good time together, catching up and generally exchanging ideas that might become incredible breakthroughs a few years further on. A few notes, though - you may not have seen the Alliance security men around much yet, but they are paying attention. With the exception of the entrance to the research labs in the south wing, which is in the emerald hall on the first floor, you probably will _not_ see them unless you're somewhere that you're not supposed to be. Information on restricted areas and other 'do not dos' is available inside the desk in your suites, on the mansion cortex node, or from any of my household staff.

"And that's just about it. I'll have more information for you about this evening's activities and tomorrow's meetings in an hour, after we've all had a chance to attack the main course, so please, don't go wandering off before then." There was a short pause. "Unless you really need to use the privacy, of course, in which case please have a friend listen for you and tell you the headlines. That's all."

#

Mal looked up at the various couples that were starting to take to the cleared dance floor not far away from where he sat, and then over to Inara. "What do you think?" he whispered. "Do we dare tempt fate?"

"No, I'd just as soon not," she told him, and sighed. "Unless you see someone **we recognize** out there."

Mal just nodded evenly and did another scan of the crowd, without much hope. He'd been looking for Simon and Kaylee everywhere, but hadn't spotted them, and was starting to actually worry that they'd met with disaster on the trip between moons due to that small and fragile gravity sled, or worse, that their false identities had been discovered already by the Alliance guards or by Bentley himself. And there was just about no way to ask. If there was a chance to return to the room, perhaps he could ask the household computer if it knew anything of the Maren's arrival - but would such inquiries be logged or brought to the attention of a living person?

"Inara, darling!" Mal froze - if somebody had recognized Inara, (which was harmless in itself,) would that be someone who had met him as well, and would recognize him as Mal Reynolds? "Yes, I see you sitting there next to mister Tall; don't pretend that you don't recognize me."

"Hello Oliva," Inara said, smiling graciously and extending a hand. "It's been much too long. How is your family doing?"

"Fabulous, and you? Out onto the border on business?"

"Yes, actually... I do all of my business on the border worlds, or further out, these days," she said to the handsome but petite blonde. "This is Nathaniel Hammond, from Ariel."

"Hello, Nathaniel." Oliva's deep brown eyes stared deep into Mal. "Let me guess... old money, Renaissance man, did everything that you could to score an invitation to the conference. Am I right?"

"Er - yes, actually."

"I can always tell. You don't really look like old money, but there's a certain look for guys who are trying not to look like they're old money."

"Well, thank you," Mal said, trying not to actually grin at the notion.

"And what brings you here, Oliva?" Inara asked.

"Well, I'm covering the conference, of course."

"Covering it?"

"Oh, didn't you know that... oh, actually, you might have left too long ago. I started working for the Metropolis audio news network."

"As a reporter-journalist?" Inara asked, unable to keep a bit of the surprise out of her voice.

"Well, and why not?"

"No particular reason I guess... just never would have expected you to do something so... serious."

"Thanks a lot! I guess you always thought of me as the perfect pampered socialite?"

"No Oliva... you're far from perfect."

Oliva tittered softly "So, Nathaniel - tell me a little bit more about yourself. I know that Inara won't dish up any dirt - she thinks that it's against her Guild vow."

"There's something reassuring about that," Mal said with a little tilt of his head. "So, hmm... not that much to say - grew up in one of them boring safe neighbourhoods of the big city, spent a few years in the company business, selling pocket flashlights and cordless freezers. Now, well, I spend most of my time wandering the 'Verse and looking."

"Looking?" With this, Oliva pulled up an empty seat and waved her hand in a go-on gesture. "Looking for what, exactly?"

"Lots of things," Mal admitted. "Some new gizmo to make my mark with in the business of electronic and battery gadgets. Anything that makes a little bit more sense out of my life than generating more money." He paused artfully. "A woman suitable for serving duty as a wife, and interested in the humble rewards of the post."

"Oh, and if that's something that you're interested in, why are you spending time with this girl," Oliva laughed, thumping Inara good-naturedly with the heel of her hand onto Inara's shoulder, not hard. "She's not the marrying kind, certainly."

"No - but there are other things that she's good at, that make up somewhat for that lack," Mal kidded back.

"Yes, I guess so," Oliva said. "Well, I guess that my story isn't much different. Grew up shuffling back and forth between the country house and the city house. Wild teenage years, married off early to a guy with the right family, the right look, and the right prospects - but not the right spark. One daughter, a girl, who I love dearly, but when Nelson and I split up, she decided that she'd be better off in the long run staying with him and his nanny. That's about when I started looking for something more 'serious' to do with my life, and... Hey, Inara, is there somebody around more interesting than me? Yes, I see you looking across the dance floor and nudging Nathaniel so discretely between at his side."

"Um, sorry, Oliva. Just - well, somebody that he," and she tilted her head towards Mal, "said that he wanted me to see if I could spot. To be honest, I'm not even sure that it was them."

"And who was this 'them' anyway?" Oliva asked.

Inara hesitated for only a moment. "Doctor Professor Zan Parker and Professor Treva."

"Oh, hmm." Oliva turned around to stare in the direction that Inara had been caught looking. "No, I don't see them, but - ooh, if you're interested in meeting interesting delegates from the scientific side, then - yes, I'm **almost** positive that I see Rickard and Juli Maren over there. They haven't been seen much in public for the past two years - I'm honestly surprised that this little affair brought them out."

Mal couldn't help but give Inara a sidelong look. "By all means, could you introduce us?"

"I only met them the once, but - certainly. Come along." So the three of them got up, and made their way to and around the edge of the dance floor, since etiquette would apparently not permit anybody who wasn't dancing to cut through. This was slow business, and more than once Oliva had to stop to make small talk with somebody who wanted to talk to her about the story she'd be filing from the conference, (or a series of short dispatches, actually.) Inara was spotted once more, but managed to avoid getting dragged into more than a short exchange of hellos.

Simon and Kaylee had spotted Inara and Mal as they made their final approach, but as far as Mal couldn't tell, they hadn't paid any attention to Oliva, and he was a little worried about the first impression. If Kaylee greeted one of them, supposed strangers to the great Marens, in preference to the lady who actually had met them before, it might seem suspicious. So, a bit reluctantly, he decided to try a tactic of pre-emptive damage control. "Look, you don't know me, and you don't know my friend, but we've certainly heard about you, Mister Maren, Miz Maren, and... do you remember - um, Oliva... I don't think I caught your last name."

"Forgive me, I did neglect that step of the introductions," Inara said. "Oliva Munson, from the Red mountain Munsons. I... I did give you Nathaniel's full name, yes?" Oliva nodded yes, and opened her mouth, but didn't get a chance to speak.

"Yes, your face is surely familiar, but I'm not quite sure I can place it," Simon said, since he had pretty much managed to get his bearings by this point. "Were... were you there at the reception for the award on the rotating helical stabilizer?"

"No, it was the press conference when you first demonstrated it," Oliva said, smiling slightly. "So pleased to see you haven't abandoned the greater 'verse entirely."

"Well... we had a most pressing reason to make this particular conference," Simon told her. "And - um, well, I suppose it's your turn to do introductions now."

"No, I can't be bothered," she declared. "It's too much responsibility. Introduce yourselves and I'll supervise."

"Well, we do know who you are, as Nathaniel mentioned," Inara said. "My name is Inara Serra, and I'm a registered companion. Originally trained at Madras Temple in the great city of Sihnon, though I've been wandering the outer 'verse for nearly a year now."

"Nathaniel Hammond, from Ariel," Mal volunteered. "General science groupie, family business in portable electronics and gadget sales, wandering searcher and blah blah blah."

"Well, it's so nice to meet you," Kaylee spoke up. "I'm quickly starting to realize why we shunned the company of other professional scientists in the first place - they can be _so_ boring and full of themselves, can't they? Shoot me if I ever get that stuck up."

"I didn't bring a gun, but if you give me a chance to look for a reasonable substitute," Mal tried to make the line deadpan.

"Oh, come on, stop that," Oliva told him, and he wasn't quite sure what she meant. "Mister Maren, Miz Maren, I'd love to do a feature for the news service on you. What has your life been like this part few years? What exactly were your reasons for coming to this gathering? I'm sure it would make a fascinating piece for our listeners."

"Uh, I'm terribly sorry," Simon managed. "But just because we've come out in public again - it doesn't mean that we want to do a feature piece with the press. I'm sure that you understand."

"Yes, I suppose so," she agreed with a heavy sigh. "But I'm afraid that if you won't agree to be interview subjects, I must go and find other brilliant researchers who will. This might be a night off for you, but it's prime working shift for your humble journalists. Talk amongst yourselves, and a bientot!" Making a baby-wave gesture, she disappeared into the milling throng again.

"Wow," Kaylee whispered, and nodded as Mal shot her an 'on your guard' expression. "Very - very nice to meet you, Miss Serra, Mister Hammond."

"Yes," Simon said, and cocked his head slightly. "Listen - the crowds are more than a bit overwhelming for the two of us, and I don't believe that attendance is mandatory at this point. Would you like to come over to our room and talk in a more relaxed atmosphere? I'd be happy to talk a bit about our glory days or whatever you're interested, and we have some questions for as unlikely a pair as the two of you. What do you say?"

"Certainly," Inara agreed blandly.

"Score!" Mal exulted honestly enough. "Lead on."

There was a household servant at the dining room exit who did ask to see their invitations, (which seemed like an odd time to make that particular request, but maybe that was the point, to ask when it wouldn't be expected,) but then all he did was ask if they'd be needing anything else. Simon said no, and got out his own little direction-finder. "Suite assigned to Rickard and Juli Maren."

After a moment, the curving line of holographic light appeared - theirs was a soft pinkish-red. Mal hadn't realized that they came in different shades, but that might make it easier when different people were trying to use them to get each to their own destinations at the same time. Inara and Kaylee managed to keep up a completely innocuous stream of chatter as they walked, rode the lift up three floors, and then got to a plain wooden door in the midst of an incongruously gleaming steel corridor.

Once they were all inside, Simon chuckled. "We're quite secure in here, I'm pretty sure. Kaylee's swept for bugs, whether visual, optical, insectoid or other." Kaylee let out a little squeal, probably at the mention of 'insectoid bugs.' "And the rooms are well soundproofed, and the door - well, there might be an override computer code, I suppose, but..."

"Well enough," Mal said, keeping his voice quiet just out of habit. "It's good that we've all gotten here okay, but I don't mind saying that I'm a bit concerned about the security precautions. If they're so invisible, then how can we be sure that any plan is workable? We need to know who's were, and what their facilities are, or we might just as well give up and go home."

"Yes, I do understand what you mean, but let's not panic overmuch," Simon said. "The first avenue of attack is the household's computer system. The Alliance security are probably using it, and even if they aren't, if we can tap into household security we should be able to use it to spy on _them_. As researcher invitees, we've got a lot of access into the system - not enough to do that sort of thing directly, of course, but probably enough to find a weak point in the cyber-defences."

"Alright," Inara agreed. "We'll help out as we can with that, but our permissions will be curtailed, and we won't be able to use your credentials without raising a warning flag."

"No, but you can probably go on direct recon throughout the main house without attracting too much attention at first," Kaylee said. "While Mal, or Nathaniel, is keeping busy by soaking up every bit of the science that he can. It won't seem too unusual that you're wandering about while waiting for him to go on a break."

"Hmm..." Mal considered. "That actually doesn't sound like a bad plan, which is too bad as it doesn't sound like much fun for me, but still."

"Yeah, we play the cards as we're dealt them," Simon agreed. "I've got one of these 'catch-up training sessions' in the lab tomorrow, probably all day, while Kaylee is of in a bioscience think storm tanks." He sighed. "We'd better do what we can to drill one more time tonight, after all that's happened."

"Yeah," she agreed more quietly. "Hope that nobody finds it odd that we're missing out on the video gaming."

"Oh, that game is a pile of fei-ou, and none of us should bother with it," Mal muttered. "You should probably make one more appearance at the cocktail hour before the night grows too late, though. Once we're all caught up. No difficulties on the way over?"

"One patrol boat gave us some grief for not having an airlock on the sled," Simon muttered. "Rickard and Juli will have a summons to appear at some or other minor court back on Whittier. Nothing too big."

"If only that's the most of their problems by the time we're done," Inara muttered.

"What about you guys?" Kaylee asked. "How are the rest of the gang?"

"No real word from Jayne and Book," Mal said, "which I hope is good news. We did alright, Zoe and Wash are fine, and your sister said - that she wished that she could be here."

"Huh," Simon muttered.

"Yeah, go figure," Mal added.

#

"Good night," Book said, and stretched himself out on the convertible. "Could you take care of the light, please?"

"G'night," Jayne grumped in return, and waved a hand in front of the light fixture's sense space. More or less instantly, the front of the cabin was plunged into nothing but the faint light of the stars and a giant golden-brown planet, shining through the windows. After getting a thank-you grunt from the Shepherd, Jayne backed out of the room, turned around, and crept up the corridor to check on the Maren's bedroom.

No sounds of conjugal activities were coming from that direction, that was for certain. Jayne wasn't bragging to consider that he had a finely honed sense of sound, not only in terms of being able to hear very faint things, but interpreting what he heard. There were two separate sounds of breathing coming from behind that door, not quite synchronized but both on the medium-fast kind of frequency, and a few fidgety noises from bed-covers and the creaking of a mattress. Both of the Marens were lying in that bed, to be sure, but if Jayne was right neither of them was sleeping yet, and they weren't talking to each other or doing much of anything else. Probably just laying there and trying to fall asleep.

Would Juli have taken the bed in her lab, if she hadn't felt some kind of odd insistence to live up to her husband's promise that they'd both be in the master bedroom, Jayne wondered. Well, that didn't much matter to him. He'd go and walk around the cabin once, but there was no real point in being alert for the approach of strangers from without - not here where probably no strangers had come for years until the Serenity crew landed. The only justification for Jayne to stay up all night was so that the Maren's themselves wouldn't try anything, and they would be pretty easy to keep an ear on.

So after Jayne finished his walkabout, he settled down in the kitchen and tried to figure out what he could do to keep himself amused this time, after surreptitiously searching all the parts of the cabin where nobody was actually sleeping, the night before.

Make himself something to eat? No, he wasn't still hungry again after dinner, (Well, their dinner, which was more or less his lunch, relatively speaking.)

Ooh! There was that little video player that he'd bought with his part of his share of the meds money over on Ezra. Had he remembered to bring that from Serenity, to pack it in amongst the luggage that he'd kept with him? Suddenly excited, he rushed down the corridor, stumbling and just catching his balance outside the master bedroom. "Is something wrong out there?" Juli called.

Uh-oh. He hadn't realized that either of them would still be awake. "No, sorry, go back to sleep."

"That would logically require that we'd been to sleep already."

"Well, whatever."

The player was at the very bottom of his second pack, and he only found it in the end by emptying everything out of both bags. The earpieces and sound cable were wrapped up in a little tight ball next to it, and seeing them, Jayne suddenly thought of the downside. If he was listening to his favourite comedy program... then he couldn't really listen to what might be happening in the Maren's bedroom, and then what was the point, really, of staying up? The same argument held, at least in part, for jerry-rigging some weights to lift. Gorram it!

Jayne Cobb had never before really wished that he was a reading sort of man, but he was almost tempted to so wish now.

And then it occurred to him - the video player came with a subtitling feature. He hadn't seen the point at the time, of reading what was being said instead of hearing it, but that might be just the ticket now. So he repaired back to the kitchen and started to experiment, and soon had figured out how to watch a program with the volume turned all the way down and easy to read white letters telling him what people were saying. This was reading too, after all, but everything was fine in its proper time and place.

Nothing much happened over the next few hours, as he watched through a few instalments from his collection of 'Eavesdown liner.' A family of owls, or such-like birds, sat upon the roof for a while, Book got up out of bed to use the Privacy facilities, and a pile of dishes in the cupboard settled and tipped over out of the blue, which actually gave Jayne a slight turn until he'd investigated and decided that nothing unusual had been the cause for it, except possibly somebody stacking the pots very precariously during the course of the dinner washing-up.

Then, just as the middle of the night was crawling along and Jayne was starting to get restless and inattentive, there was something. A noise so quiet he couldn't even be sure it was footsteps on the ever so slightly creaky floor, from inside the Maren's room. Somebody - somebody had gotten out of bed perhaps, and was taking extraordinary care to not be heard or noticed in the process. Jayne froze as still and silent as he could be, the video player paused in his hand, wondering how quickly or quietly he could set the thing down and replace it with a gun. He didn't still have Vera with him - he couldn't keep such a big girl with him the whole time in a situation like this, and couldn't bear the thought of somebody grabbing her and using her against him, so had sent her back with Zoe. But he had a little automatic pistol tucked under his arm...

Ever so slowly and quietly the door to the Maren's room drew open. This one Jayne couldn't even hear a whisper's worth, but he could just make out the door in the faint light of the night, (that was one of the reasons that he'd chosen to keep watch from this particular spot in the kitchen,) and though he couldn't see the door moving with his naked eye, like a minute hand on a dial chrono, he could notice a difference when he looked away and then back a bit later.

Once the door had been opened sufficiently, Juli Maren crept out through it, looked both ways - and spotted Jayne down the hall, watching her intently. She seemed to be on the point of exclaiming out loud in surprise, but then caught herself, and slowly swung the door back closed, then made her quiet way down the hall into the kitchen. At that point, she finally broke her silence, though in a whisper. "Charles - hello. I did have the notion that you'd be around somewhere, but wasn't quite expecting that you'd be sitting up and watching our door like a hawk."

"Well, the only point to my being awake through the night is to keep watch on you and your husband as you sleep," Jayne pointed out. "This seemed like a good place for it."

"Hmm." Juli considered. "And that blue sun brand video player that I see in your hand?"

Jayne chuckled. "Just a way of wiling away the time as I stood watch. Didn't keep me from hearing you slip out of bed and walk over to your bedroom door, now did it?"

"Apparently not, I guess. Impressive feat of hearing." Juli crossed back to the kitchen counter, ran a mugful of water from the quiet dispenser tap, and then put it into the microwave oven to warm up some. "You're very observant in a lot of ways, Charles. Have you trained as a wilderness tracker? I know that you normally can't follow a deer at much distance from the sound it's making, but..."

"Now now, Miz Maren." Jayne chuckled softly. "You **know** that I'm not a-s'posed to tell you things about my past, just like that one."

"Yes, I know," Juli admitted quietly. "But I also think that you're going to anyway."

"And why would that be?"

"Because you're bored and I'm okay company in the middle of the night," she answered. "And because if you **don't** satisfy my curiosity, at least a little bit, I'll go back to bed with my husband and leave you out here with just that crummy little video player to keep you entertained."

"Hehe." Jayne shook his head. "I think that you're a little bit full of yourself, darling. The vids make me laugh more than you do, and they don't ask anything of me but my attention." However, he didn't start the unit playing again yet, even when Juli busied herself for a moment with loose tea leaves in her now-boiling water.

During the silence, something arguably halfway clever occurred to Jayne. He **did** want to convince Juli Maren to stay up longer with him, for several reasons, and not at the price of blowing cover for himself or his crew. But - what she really wanted was a bit of entertainment, a story of life in the wild 'verse beyond her own experience. Could Jayne manage to spin a yarn that would incorporate enough of his life experience to be compelling without being personally incrinimating? He actually thought so. He could incorporate stories from his past confederates in dirty dealing and so on.

"I grew up on the mean streets of Eavesdown," he started off. "Mom and dad were a good sort trapped in a bad situation - they did their best to raise us kids up right on the straight and narrow, but it was hard for me to see the point of that, I guess. Dad ran a Cortex nook, and he was always getting leaned on by one gang or another. My brothers did the hard work of getting into one of the gangs, and by the time I was old enough, I was a legacy. It never really occurred to me that I didn't want to get into a life of crime."

"Really, how fascinating," Juli remarked, and so Jayne continued on with his composite tale-telling. He did give a guest-starring role to Badger, since he did know the beetle-eyed Persephone crime boss better than many, and Badger was unlikely to give them up to anybody who was looking for him - he found Mal's crew in all of its diversity much too valuable on this sort of job to get them into trouble with Alliance law on the purpose of it.

Juli finished drinking her tea as she listened, and toasted up some vanilla-iced pastries for both of them, and once Jayne had finished his own story he was able to get her to tell a short one of her own, though possibly it was no more true than his had been - brought up by a lower-middle-class polygamous family in a farming colony in orbit around Osiris, running the planting and harvesting machinery and so on - being pushed to excel in scientific studies by her mother so that she would have a chance to leave home and make a better life for herself, being accepted to graduate school on Londinium, getting the innocence of her sheltered upbringing shattered in her first day on campus, and meeting Rickard at a commencement party when she had finally gotten her master's degree in biological technology.

And then, with a yawn and a smile, she said that she really did need to get back to bed, and headed off. Jayne decided not to protest this time, partly because he had storied himself out, and picked up the video player, keen to get back to the show. Unfortunately, the darn thing was soon complaining that its power source was exhausted - probably because he'd forgotten to switch it off and conserve energy while he and Juli had been talking, just left the thing sitting there on the table, paused in mid-joke. Gorram it!

What was he going to do now?

#

"Well, umm, thanks, I guess," Kaylee said to a blonde-haired tall young lady who still didn't even look old enough to be more than an undergraduate. "There was a lot of hard work that went into that one, you know... larger layers building smaller layers, and what have you, but I'm proud of all the good work that it's done."

"Is it true, the story they tell about how you got the idea for the diffusion timing system?" her questioner pressed.

"Well, unusually enough..."

Simon reacted to the safe-word cue almost instantly. He'd been talking with a grizzly forty-something nuclear engineer about the practical tutorials, trying to get a notion of what the procedure might be from someone who said that he'd been through that sort of thing before, but they'd agreed earlier that 'unusual' or any variant of it was to be treated as a distress call, a sort of 'get me the hell out of this conversation' sentiment. He took one look at his wrist chrono and realized how he had to play it.

"Listen, Miss Rye..."

"Reya," the girl insisted stubbornly. "Amana Reya."

"Miss Reya, then - I'm sorry to have to interrupt this love-fest, and I can see that my dear better half is loving the attention," Simon lied smoothly, "but it was a long and difficult trip that we took to get here, and I think it would be good for us both to get our full measure of rest before tomorrow instead of staying up all night. This is where the line is drawn."

"Come on," Amana told Kaylee. "You can't let him talk to you like that! Cross the gorram line."

"Um - maybe another time," Kaylee told her as gracefully as she could manage. "Hopefully we'll meet again." _After_ I get a chance to look up that story you were asking me about on the Cortex, and figure out a clever 'real tale' twist on it, she added to herself silently. "Take me somewhere private, my darling," she breathed over-dramatically to Simon.

"Delighted to, my dear," he played back, and they headed out of the room, each with one arm looped around the other. This time, they actually navigated most of the way back to their room without needing the light-guide. "So, you were holding your own fairly well until the last little bit there," he said softly to her.

"Yes, I suppose so," Kaylee answered distractedly. "Darling, do you think that we did the right thing in making ourselves disappear for so long?"

"Hmm?" Simon was able to guess that Kaylee meant something other than the face value of that question, if only because it was something that didn't really mean anything for her and him, as opposed to Rickard and Juli. Maybe even something that she wouldn't have asked him straight out, if they were private and she could have. But without being sure what the subtext was, he didn't really want to say anything one way or the other.

"We had our reasons, dear," he told her. "Now that we've got to this place, we'll have to see how it goes and make our decision based on that."

"Hmm, yes," she muttered, and stepped ahead to the door, breaking their embrace but still holding his hand. Once again, they entered and sealed the door in silence. "Okay, lab procedures," she said to him, immediately getting down to business. "What's the most important precaution to take versus accidental radiation exposure?"

"Um - keeping my detector worn in the appropriate fashion at all times, checking it regularly?" Simon blurted out, not at all sure if this was the right answer. Kaylee hesitated for a long moment, looking deep into his eyes, and then nodded.

Simon asked one next, about the sort of debate that he'd been through in medical school, that he thought would be relevant to brainstorming sessions. The rapid-fire exchange of questions back and forth became dizzying, hypnotic, and somehow exhilarating. Neither of them got every detail right, by any means, but every failure was quickly covered as a learning point before moving on.

Simon had just managed to correctly answer a poser about something to do with fuel line flows when Kaylee said. "Right. That's five in a row perfectly answered. You deserve something more than just a verbal way to go." And she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. Simon was so startled by this that he wasn't able to react in any particular way for a long time. He had been so wrapped up in just asking and answering quiz questions that he hadn't even realized that Kaylee had been so close to him, (which would ordinarily have been pretty high on his list of things to pay attention to.) Without consciously intending to kiss back, Simon's body seemed to react to the situation on autopilot, pressing his lips back against her, wrapping one arm around Kaylee's appealing body until it got to the very small of her back.

And then, the moment finished of its own accord, and they were standing and looking at each other, both breathing heavily. "You... you did that to reward yourself, not me," Simon said, his voice throaty, and yet undercut with a confidence that he didn't feel deep inside. "Admit it."

"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't," she teased back. "Seems pretty obvious that we both enjoyed it, and why not?"

"We - we're in the middle of something very serious here," Simon said, part of him wanting to let go his grip of her, and part wanting to hold on forever. "A - a mission. Even though we play the part of man and wife when we're out that door and in public, we - we **have** to keep more discipline than that, behind closed doors. It's important that we not go too far, here and now."

"Why?" Kaylee's voice was a wistful plea. "Why can't we live through what we're acting out? How would it hurt the mission?"

"Because - because I won't care about a Baty power engine if I'm... if I'm wrapped up in what I could suddenly start feeling for you," Simon choked out.

That stopped Kaylee short. After a second, she stepped definitively back, so hard that Simon couldn't keep his hold on her. Kaylee's eyes stayed fixed on Simon, never wavering, but he couldn't really read what emotional response was behind them, if she was offended again, or touched by what he had said, or resigned, or just plain didn't understand what he meant. And then... "I guess that you're right. And it's late enough that we should turn in for the night. Do you intend to make me flip a half-credit for the big bed?"

"N-no, of course not, I'll take the cot if you don't want to..." That sentence trailed off into a tailspin of its own stupidity. If he had just finished explaining to Kaylee that they couldn't kiss, couldn't hold each other close, because of the danger of passion clouding their edge, or his at least, his drive to finish this mission with a success... then sleeping on the same bed was probably a bad idea, especially a bed like that one. It would be so easy for something to start while they were both half-asleep, and then be tempted to not stop, and... "Yeah, that's the way to go, obviously."

Kaylee smiled a bit sadly. "Okay. I'll... I'll go get changed for bed in the Privacy." She crossed over to where one of her bags was still sitting on the floor, bent down to rummage through it, (which tested Simon's resolve momentarily once again,) and then vanished behind the door of that little room. Simon hesitated, and then took the bag that held his own night-type clothes into the living room. It would be better for him to change in there, just in case Kaylee got finished before he did, and came out without checking for the coast to be clear.

But part of his mind kept insisting that none of this was really for the best, that what he and Kaylee could have together if they just let themselves be open to it was more valuable than any nuclear reactor could ever be. Unfortunately, Simon suspected that this was the part of his mind that he could never really get to shut up, especially when he was trying to sleep.

He only saw Kaylee once more that evening, after they had both changed. She was sitting up in bed, a portable Cortex interface pad on her lap and crawling her way through whatever cyber-streams there were, probably on the local household node. In a simple white undershirt and her hair loose, she looked incredibly adorable. "Listen, I... I just wanted to say, if I hurt your feelings, I didn't... I'd hate to think..."

"No, it's okay," Kaylee assured him. "Weren't my favourite words to hear, but they did and all need to be said." There was a moment's pause. "Good night now?"

"Yeah, see you in the morning." Simon sighed. "Last one to wake up for the shower is a rotten egg."

"Ehh? How's that again?"

"Oh, umm..." Simon shook his head. "It's silly, never mind."

"I love silly things..." Kaylee let that hang in the air. "Well, maybe another time."

"Yeah, alright."

And he closed the door between the bedroom and the living room, hoping that he wasn't closing another metaphorical door tonight as well.


	6. Chapter 6

In their own suite, Mal and Inara were not feeling particularly comfortable as they prepared to take to bed either. The problem, Mal reflected, was that neither of them really had the technical know-how to really investigate the rooms for any kind of security monitoring devices and remove them, at least, not with any assurances that the exercise would be successful. For the entire evening, then, Mal had been forced to stay 'in character', playing the role of Nathaniel Hammond from Ariel, but he was sure that Inara didn't want him to continue acting as her client indefinitely.

All of a sudden, Inara got up from the table, where she had been amusing herself playing some solitaire game that Mal didn't know with Mah-jongg tiles, and turned to face him. "I'm sorry, but there's one thing that I must attend to before we retire for the evening."

Oh. "You need to leave the room for this?"

"I hope not, but if I must negotiate on this point in front of you, please do not interfere with the conversation lightly." She paused until Mal nodded his concurrence, and then laid her fingers upon the room's intercom control. "Is Mister Bentley available?"

There was a pause, and Mal was starting to wonder if Inara wasn't using the thing right, then. "Bentley here, and what is this in reference to?" The voice seemed to come from everywhere around then, not just the spot on the wall.

"Inara Serra wishes to clarify a point of our understanding," Inara replied to the invisible voice.

"Just a moment, if that's alright."

"Certainly." Inara let her fingers fall from the contact patch. Wondering what would happen next; Mal got up from the bed where he'd been sitting and trying to relax, and checked that his fancy rich boy clothes were all straight. With a strange 'zwaaht' sound effect, a haze of color and light filled the whole room for a moment and coalesced into a transparent image of their host standing next to the fireplace.

"I hope that this can be settled quickly over the holo-viewer," he said a bit testily.

"I would think so, sir," Inara said gracefully. "What I'm about to ask of is made more awkward by the fact that we two are, for all intents and purposes, guests at my request, and therefore insisting on all the usual courtesies is in itself indelicate, but - we were speaking with some of the scientist invitees earlier this evening, and they spoke of having to inactivate certain monitoring devices in their rooms in order to be assured of privacy. This was an amusing game, to people of such confidence and technical abilities."

"Ah, yes," Bentley said with a little smile. "My security people would have made the bugs tamper-proof if they could, but I remember going through this little dance myself at scientific symposia, and how I'd have reacted if somebody had made 'the game' too hard."

"You'd have left without participating?" Mal blurted out, before remembering that he wasn't supposed to interfere casually. Inara shot him a very dark look, and he shrugged an apology.

"No, I wouldn't have left the premises in all likelihood - but I wouldn't have participated much in the panels. It would have been a point of intellectual pride, to not rest until I had found vulnerability in the supposedly 'tamper-proof' systems and destroyed them utterly."

"The devices you use now might as well be tamper-proof to us, Bentley, for we have no skills to disable or even recognize them with," Inara told him. "I realize that you have no particular reason to keep us contented, but I must have assurances. It is a matter of the strictest Guild policies, that what goes on between a Companion and her client at certain times is strictly between the two of them, known to no-one else. If you cannot tell me that the cameras and microphones are turned off and will not be reactivated while we are here..."

"Rest yourself assured on that point," Bentley told her. "They were never turned on, from before this morning. I know that particular detail of the Guild policies, and have in fact been the beneficiary of it often. Will there be anything else?"

Inara paused just a moment, and then shook her head. "Sorry to intrude on your time, Bentley," she said quietly. "You must be very busy with details for tomorrow."

"Actually, I hope that I'm very nearly near the end of the to-do list," he said with a slight smile. "Good night."

Inara nodded, and Bentley's image winked out with no more ceremony. "Hmm..." she muttered.

"Do - do you think that it's safe to..." Mal started.

"Oh, yes, I'm pretty sure that he was telling the truth about that." Mal had suspected that himself, but getting Inara's certain opinion reassured him considerably. "There's something that's bugging me about that conversation, though."

"Maybe he wasn't right about the cameras being turned off from the start, but they're off now?" Mal suggested. "Could that be it?"

She seriously considered that explanation for a moment, and then discarded it. "No, I don't think so." After a little more thought, she appeared to get it. "He might be suspicious of the fact that I asked, that I didn't just take privacy for granted. It might suggest to him that we do indeed have something to hide. If that's it, then I'm sorry... but I didn't feel sure that we could count on the Guild's protection if I didn't invoke it out loud. It's a poor enough shield anyway, against people who might feel that the Companions will never know that they spied."

"Yes, well... you did what you could, and I wouldn't consider the outcome that bad, even if Bentley's a little mistrustful now. He hasn't got anything specific to pin against us."

"No, just a huge security array in the rest of the building, including the security labs, to train on us," Inara pointed out. "And if we associate closely with Simon and Kaylee, despite having no obvious prior relationship with them - then the taint might fall on them as well."

"Hmm." Mal considered. "Should I clear out and get ready to sleep on the sofa?"

"No, I don't really see a need for that," Inara replied airily. "We can take separate sides of the bed easily enough."

"Well, alright, but I will give fair warning. Those who I've shared a bed with do complain that I have a tendency to crowd or push them around. I can't help it."

Inara rolled her eyes. "Well, if put to it, I might need to fall back on my own little habit of pinching in my sleep. That one I **can** help, but I'll use it if I'm forced to."

"Oh, great for you, but I'm not entirely sure that it'll help me."

"What might, then?" Inara considered this. "Perhaps you just can't relax well enough to sleep still. I can try a massage."

"Well, worth a go, I suppose," Mal said, though he didn't hold out too much hope for this.

"Alright, stretch yourself out, with your head on the pillow." Both of them were already changed for bed at this point, though Inara's nightgown was much fancier than the pyjamas she had approved for 'Nathaniel.'

"Should I turn over onto my front?" Mal asked, complying with that first instruction.

"No, I'll do your front first, and then the back. Why?"

"Umm... no reason." Mal closed his eyes, and though he tried to concentrate on anything but the sensation of smooth feminine hands touching him through the fabric, a wave of sleepiness seemed to hit him so that he could hardly focus on anything but that one thing. He didn't even remember turning over, though Inara said later that he was still awake enough to comply with that request when she was ready to make it.

What he did experience, in the depths of the night, was an unusual dream. At first it seemed like a dream memory of the past, of battles in the war and other missions taken with the crew of his ship. But there were other parts that he couldn't figure out - two different dark-skinned men who each wanted something from him, or maybe the same thing, but it was hard to tell that because he never saw them together. A lady whose face or features he never saw, but could tell that she was lovely beyond compare, and a fight of some kind, and being afraid of losing her. A coffin, with all of his friends gathered around it, except then they all had his own face. Looking out of Serenity's viewport and seeing that they were coming in for a landing on some world that he'd never seen or even viewed in an atlas. And a pretty girl dancing by herself in a dark and smoky tavern.

When he woke up, the chrono read 7:46 local time, which was later than he'd meant to let himself slumber. There was a lump wrapped up in covers next to him that he couldn't identify except for a bit of dark hair poking out, and he was laying on his stomach, exactly where he'd been the night before, as far as he could tell.

#

"How's it going?" Zoe asked Wash softly. He turned up from the controls, startled.

"Hey, I didn't even here you come up," he admitted.

"You're half-way to dozing up here," she teased. "How long have you been up here?"

"Only about three and a half hours."

"Which meant you got up halfway through the night."

"That's by ship's time," Wash insisted, "and I don't have the luxury of sticking to a steady schedule that way, you know. Figured that it made sense to get up when dawn was breaking at Bentley's mansion, just in case there was anything we needed to pay attention to."

"And has there been?"

"Well, no," Wash admitted. "Nothing but the usual items in the news, including one small puff piece about the conference, not mentioning anybody we know. Nothing at all on the emergency beacons, obviously, or through the top-secret high encryption Cortex streams that Rickard and Kaylee set up for anybody who needed to communicate out of the conference without being detected."

"That ain't worrisome?" Zoe said. "Filing regular status reports wasn't the plan."

"No, I remember that part," Wash agreed a bit huffily. "This channel is pretty safe, but still, somebody might notice if it gets used regularly and sets a pattern. Better to stay in radio silence unless there's a real need. Over the more regular encrypted communicator, Book reports everything pretty quiet and peaceful back at Maren cabin. Jayne is staying up all night, but not being much of a pest otherwise. And the Marens seem to still be delighted to have company."

"Makes you wonder if they're really cut out to be hermits after all," Zoe mused. "Well, I won't deny that I'd rather have some idea what's going on at the conference, but that's probably a foolish wish. Oh - is there any indication of trouble out here?"

"Nah, we're pretty much invisible where we are," Wash allowed. "There are Alliance ships in a lower orbit, they could spot us if they were really looking, but I don't think any of them are paying so much attention."

"There's something rumbling up in the dreams," River announced, nearly making Wash jump up out of the chair. She often spoke in an oddly creepy voice, though he couldn't put his finger on what made it so weird. At this point, he just caught a glimpse of her face behind Zoe's side. "Probably nothing that I have the context to exactly sort out. One single moment, last night, and then... a frustrated longing, a yearning - through the night and all of the day so far. Not even paying attention to what he's doing, we'll be lucky if he doesn't blow the whole place to the kingdom gone."

"Well, whatever that's all about," Zoe drawled. "River, do you want to go have breakfast?"

"You don't need to act like I'm stupid whenever I'm talking about something that you don't understand, by the way," River complained, shifting from crazy prophetess to bratty little girl in a moment's time. "But yeah, some cereal and cold soya milk won't entirely suck." She cocked her head slightly. "Strawberry strudel pastries for the pilot."

"Umm... yeah, thanks, that'll hit the spot," Wash muttered, once again spooked by the way her suggestion had struck a chord in him. Had he been just thinking that would be a good way to grab some food without having to leave the controls?

No, couldn't be. He just knew a good idea when he heard it.

#

Kaylee sighed and sat back into her chair, but not too far back because it would tilt and maybe make her distraction too obvious, like she was slacking off. She felt like it was obvious that she wasn't speaking up more, but Simon's advice had been clear on this subject - piping up when she wasn't sure what to say would be a much more obvious way of attracting attention than staying silent.

It was a large group session, after all, and a handful of the group members were really dominating the discussion. It might seem a bit strange that Juli Maren wouldn't be one of those bright stars, but then, considering that she'd been out of the limelight for two years, probably not that strange. And paying attention, Kaylee had identified several people who had not spoken up at all, except to introduce themselves at the beginning of the morning.

Of course, when she wasn't speaking up, it was harder to stay motivated on the group discussion, and harder still to avoid thinking about Simon. Kissing Simon last night - it had been every bit as good as she'd hoped, and fantasized... well, possibly a very small letdown from everything that she'd built him up into over the months of mostly unrequited longing, but - 'the higher you fly, the harder you fall', as the saying went. To get told so bluntly that she'd made her move at the wrong time - and yet, could she really disagree with the sentiment? If he realized that she liked him and wanted to... to be with him, then wouldn't it happen when they got back to Serenity? He liked her, and he wanted her too.

But, back on Serenity, there was River, and as much as Kaylee liked the younger girl, (loved her, in point of fact, as a friend or a sister of her own blood,) there was no denying that when it came to herself and Simon, River was a problem. She needed so much of her big brother's attention, just to stay out of trouble, and keep the crippling pain of what she had been through away. Kaylee didn't begrudge her that, but how could she ever have enough of Simon's heart at the same time?

And then, on a more practical level, was he obsessing over her and what they'd said, and hadn't said, and all of the baggage it held? Kaylee was having a tough enough time, but she was essentially just in a big jaw session here. Simon had to work on a nuclear reactor, making adjustments to it and demonstrating a familiarity with the principles involved. (If Badger really wanted to figure out how to copy the Baty engines, maybe he needed the kind of information that was being given to conference delegates more than he actually needed the unprotected sample reactor. But that was his problem - he'd offered to pay for the reactor, and they would do their best to get it to him. And negotiate for the information and training with whoever was willing to pay the most for it, perhaps. She'd have to talk to Mal about that at some point...)

In the meantime, the brainstorming session seemed to be running into a bit of a problem in that there were two different people who had more or less appointed themselves as being in charge of running it, and each of them had different priorities. A guy around her own age, Mihael Corrist, had taken the point of view that they needed to start 'from the first place' and talk about the kind of things that could introduce health risks in nuclear refinement, and establish tests and troubleshooting strategies for each one, while an older woman, Shenae Bowlson, was continuing to bring up things that she anticipated might go wrong, and how to deal with each one. The two of them were already snapping at each other, and if things got any worse there would be a full-blown science hissy fight, Kaylee expected.

And then, suddenly, she knew that the time was right to speak up. "Hello, excuse me, could I have the floor for a moment?"

"Umm... yes, Miz Maren?" Mihael said. Shenae glared at her, but made a kind of nod. Kaylee guessed that both of them hoped that she would take their side.

"It seems pretty obvious that we need to have just one person in charge of running the meeting, deciding what goes on the agenda first, so that we don't keep running into cross-purposes the whole time. Obviously, what everybody is bringing up should be addressed, time permitting, but prioritization is necessary so that we make efficient use of our time."

"Yes, I would agree," Shenae said. "And therefore?"

"Put it to a quick vote, by show of hands," she continued. "Is there anybody who wants to volunteer, or nominate somebody, as our chairperson, aside from Mihael and Shenae?" There was a restless moment, but no obvious contenders, which Kaylee was just as glad about. "Okay, who's for Shenae?" There were a lot of hands raised, but as I took a quick count, it seemed fairly evident that she didn't have majority support. "And who wants Mihael?"

There were more hands raised in support at this point, and even though not everybody had committed themselves, Kaylee thought that he was going to be the winner. "What about you, Maren?" Shenae grumbled. "Ain't you voting for anybody?"

"Not when I'm running the vote," Kaylee explained. "Unless a tie break was necessary, which umm, no, it doesn't seem to be. Twelve votes to ten, in favour of Mihael."

"With five people not voting, not counting the two of us," Shenae counting up. "You put me up first, with hardly any warning. Maybe there were people who were still making up their minds to..."

"Oh, come on, Shenae," a red-haired lady who'd been one of her staunchest supporters during the discussion grumbled. "Stop wasting so much time. We can go through the young turk's cautious step by step plan, before getting to the good stuff."

"All right, all right," Shenae muttered.

"Thank you very much, Miz Maren," Mihael said.

"Please - Juli," Kaylee insisted. "And no thanks are necessary... I just saw what I thought was necessary and jumped in to do it."

"Right, well... let's continue on with the testing procedures, if nobody has thought of a new risk factor..."

After that, she pretty much sat back and let that procedural suggestion be the balance of my contribution to the meeting. Shenae tried to draw Kaylee out into something talking in detail about customized remedies to genetic damage, but she didn't really want to try and ride the real Juli Maren's hobby-horse, and in any event, it did seem to be something of an off-topic side track, so someone else was able to bring the discussion back on course.

And then, we broke for lunch. Kaylee asked about Simon, under Rickard Maren's name, hoping that she'd get a chance to see him, even if they couldn't go back to the room and talk privately, but found out that they'd already finished their own noon rest session, and most of them hadn't come back through security from the south wing. So she munched away on a fowl sandwich and some casserole dish with pasta, and stewed beef, and plenty of mushy veggies.

#

"Bentley, I'm glad that I got caught up with you," Inara muttered, power-walking across the hall to meet her host. "I... I wanted to apologize, if I offended you with my request last night."

"No, that's quite all right," he insisted. "You had every reason to be concerned, since I hadn't said anything about the privacy issue. The mansion **is** wired for completely security coverage, and what with leaving it on in the scientists' rooms... well, I do understand."

"Good, I'm glad that we're both okay about it, then," she said. "In fact, I'd be interested in seeing some of the security 'behind the scenes' stuff, if I could possibly be so bold as to ask about it."

"Hmm, really?" Inara felt some of her insides clench, as she wondered what would happen next. Mal would **not** have wanted her to do or say any of this, if he'd have known what she had in mind. She'd mentioned something of the sort, in the vaguest possible terms - and his opinion had been that she would risk multiplying Bentley's suspicions, or at least adding to them.

For her own part, Inara hoped that she could actually do damage-control on the situation by providing a rationale for why she'd brought up the topic of surveillance - or at least turn the whole situation into some useful information. The mansion security system was the biggest obstacle to getting anything as big as the engine out into the landing field without being caught at it - if she could possibly understand something of its strengths and weaknesses, well, who knew?

"I suppose that would be alright." Bentley gestured to the uniformed men who he had been about to leave with, part of his household staff. "However, I do have pressing business at the moment. Let's see... can you meet me at three o'clock in the Seaver hall upstairs?"

"Umm." Inara forced out a girlish giggle. "Do you have another one of those direction finders? M- Nathaniel has ours, and I don't think I'd even be able to find my way back to the debate theatre where I last saw him."

Bentley let out a little smile, and turned to household staff member number two. "A light pointer for Lady Companion Serra?" The other man immediately produced a pointer, Inara brought up her hand, and he easily tossed it over to her. Inara and Bentley both smiled at the interplay, while the... was he a butler or a manservant or what? He didn't let anything crack his impassive face, in any event.

Once Bentley had left, though, Inara started to get worried. If Bentley **had** suspected the real reason that she wanted to get a good look at the security nerve center, then waiting until three of the afternoon would give him plenty of time to prepare... an unpleasant surprise for her. He couldn't really do anything to her, of course, not while the status of the Guild protected her. All registered Companions held the equivalent of diplomatic immunity, anywhere that the Guild was recognized and treated with. But - like a diplomat, if this criminal scheme was exposed, she could be deported back to the nearest Companion's temple in disgrace - and the others would have to face Alliance justice. The thought of being unable to help, or even stay with them, as Mal went through that, and maybe Simon and Kaylee... and might the others be caught too? An Alliance cruiser sent out to chase Serenity down - an armed team descending on the Maren cabin to attempt to defuse the 'hostage crisis...'

No, she told herself. That's just being silly. Nothing of the sort is going to go wrong, especially not so quickly.

#

"This is all wrong," Derrial said, frowning at what he surveyed.

"Are you sure?" Rickard said, considering the details himself. "I know that there's a while to go, but I think that we're on the right track."

"No, I hesitate to argue with such a brilliant mind as yours, but... if the result is to be anything like what is pictured on the box, then this spire is already far to long to fit anywhere within the finished castle. We may perhaps have managed to conflate two towers together, do you see?" He gestured. "And the Green outer wall is not intended to be adjacent to the red."

"Then why are they fitting together so well?" Rickard grumbled, considering the puzzle pieces.

"Simply to provide potholes for us to stumble into as we work to complete it," Juli grumbled. "I told you, I was in school with Baryan L'rime, and that is exactly the sort of devious twist that his mind would seize upon. 'Most existing assembly puzzles can be worked out far too easily by a simple, if time consuming, trial and error algorithm. Providing a high but not extravagant number of false positive connections would force puzzlers to also apply a faculty of logical deduction in order to reach the ultimate goal.'" She looked from Rickard to Derrial, both of whom were staring at her. "Okay, neither of you know Baryan, I guess, but that was a **very** good imitation of him."

"I reserve judgment on that one until we can get somebody else's opinion - which might be a very long time," Rickard said, taking the red and green sections that Book had indicated and fiddling with them. "Sorry, darling, but experience has proved that your vocal impersonations are not nearly as apt as you invariably seem to think that they are. Is there a possibility that these are _inner_ walls?"

"Hmm... conceivably yes," Derrial replied, as Juli sulked for a bit. "We can proceed under that possibility until proven otherwise, as no information was given on the coloring of the inner walls. But the tower turrets needs must be separated."

"At what point, then?"

"Hmm..." Juli picked up the cylinder, which at the moment had a few vaguely Freudian aspects to its look, and observed the joins carefully before detaching it into two separate parts. "We can try with that, and adjust as needed to actually join up other pieces."

"Okay I suppose." Rickard considered. "Aside from the task of building this fortress, there are two thoughts on my mind. One being when people will want to have some supper, and the other being Charles waking up." Juli seemed to react with a sort of a tremor. "Well, I know that the latter is something that will simply happen when it happens, but..."

"Yes, probably," Derrial admitted. "As far as supper, I must say that I'm still feeling no hunger pains after that impressive luncheon." Juli nodded an obvious agreement. "So, did you get this puzzle before retiring away to a hermit's life?"

"Not quite," Juli said. "Or maybe it was at nearly the same moment. We held - a sort of party here, I guess. Partly a housewarming, but more a farewell to several good friends that we didn't intend to 'have over again' anytime soon. It was nice, if a bit bittersweet - like a wake for us, even though we weren't really dying. Good liquor and wine, a monstrous roast of beef, and gifts that would do well for our new solitary lifestyle."

"And yet, it's taken you two years to get to this particular puzzle," Derrial noticed with a lifted eyebrow.

"Well, we have been pretty busy with work," Rickard said. "Among other things."

"Fair enough."

They kept working at it, with more little 'logical traps' continuing to eat up time, though a number of pieces of the castle did start to get assembled, and Rickard made a stab at a ground-up construction. It wasn't too long before Jayne poked his head into the living room, said good afternoon, and immediately sloped off to the kitchen to begin fixing his breakfast. Juli invited him in to participate while he ate, and he did bring a plateful of scrambled orange-eggs and ham into the living room, but didn't bother with the castle puzzle, just making light-hearted conversation, and pretty effectively distracting Juli from getting much done on the puzzle either. Derrial kept an eye on Rickard, wondering if the man cared how much attention his wife was paying to a virile stranger, but if the matter had any significance, then Rickard was staying very silent and poker-faced about it, continuing to build up until Jayne had finished eating and said that he would go outside to take a little target practice while there was still light enough for it.

"Okay, I think that I want something to eat too," Rickard finally said once Jayne had made his exit. "Nothing too big or too fancy. How about a vegetable rice soup or something of the sort?"

"I think that you could convince me," Juli admitted. "Oh, and I know something that would go great with that..." Without elaborating further, she got up and hurried toward the kitchen.

"Let me know if I can help out," Derrial said, continuing to work on assembling some of the little outbuildings, but his heart was heavy with other thoughts. One of the problems was, as much as the Marens did seem to honestly care for each other, they certainly didn't have what he would generally think of as a strong and open partnership in marriage. Was it possible that Juli was desperately unhappy out here in the woods, and might seize on some opportunity to relieve the loneliness, even use that as a way of testing the waters before leaving Rickard? As preoccupied as he could be, that sort of development would surely devastate the proud engineer - and it would be all their fault for having intruded on the pair's solitude.

But then, perhaps if any of that happened, it would just have been accelerating something that was already going on. Juli had been on a days-long hike when they had landed, so perhaps she had already been flirting with these ideas. Perhaps, one of these times, she would simply have never returned to Rickard in the cabin, just hiked all the way to that nearby village and used the ID bracelet (which Kaylee now had,) to draw on personal credit and travel further on, looking for somewhere to start a life all her own.

'What God Almighty hath joined, let no man put asunder' was one of those other verses that Book had some moral issues with. Back on Earth-that-was, perhaps, in her ancient tribes and civilizations, the stability of a pairing between husband and wife had been very important as the bedrock of society as a whole, not to mention the question about the certainty of fathers taking care of their children, when they didn't have scientific blood tests to verify paternity.

Even then, Book suspected that church rulings against the possibility of divorcing a marriage that wasn't working had done a lot of harm, and now that there wasn't as much reason to think of that as an absolute prohibition, long-standing tradition was, as River might put it, troublesome. People got married for so many reasons, usually full of the flush of strong emotions, and that wasn't necessarily a good thing in terms of building a strong family that could reasonably be expected to be a blessing on all of those involved for a lifetime.

Whenever he could, Book counselled those young couples who came to him, or to a church or group of the brethren to which he was attached, asking to be married - telling them to look realistically at the pitfalls that might be expected to affect their marriage, to work through as many of those issues as they could _before_ the binding vows were taken, but not everyone who took the label of 'man of the faith' upon them seemed to bother with that. And then, the 'verse being what it was, not everybody took vows with a man of the faith - men of law were also vested with the ability to make marriages, and that was probably for the best as well...

"Don?" Rickard asked.

"Um, yes?"

"Could you please set the table?"

He laughed silently. "Of course." Getting up carefully, so as not to disturb the construction progress of Castle Maren, he headed off to the dining table in the kitchen.

#

As hard as he might try, Simon couldn't sleep.

When he woke up, he had dreaded getting through the day, working on a fusion reactor, but that part had actually been fairly painless. He'd been working with a group of other scientists, various ages and all kinds of backgrounds, all of them without any particular experience on this particular type of engine. It had reminded him quite a lot of science labs back at the University of Toth on Osiris, working with friends and classmates on experiments in chemistry and dissecting, (or vivisecting,) animal specimens. (Later on, in medical school, it had of course been human cadavers.)

He had somewhat expected that connection beforehand. What he hadn't thought of until the session had been well along, had been the idea that working with an active reactor might be like performing surgery in a busy city operating room. The machine, once operating, was uncommonly like a living system as opposed to a simple device that could be shut off and started again - yes, it could be brought down to a state of inactivity, carefully, if everything was in proper order. Otherwise, attempting to just 'turn it off' could easily result in some sort of a containment breach, which was even worse than a patient dying on the table - if only because it would probably kill all of the 'surgeons' as well.

He'd gotten a few unimpressed looks and even nearly caused a very minor accident himself early in the morning, after being called on specifically to put what they'd been learning into practice, and before he'd managed to 'hit his mental stride' as it were. By afternoon, though, he'd found himself doing well, and even been in the top quarter of the evaluations given out, which was as high as he would want to be in terms of not attracting unfortunate attention.

No - it had been seeing Kaylee at dinner and during the evening that had been the truly torturous part of his day. He'd seen her in the morning, of course - they'd gotten washed and dressed at around the same time, (taking turns in the Privacy room,) and had gone to the breakfast room together; he'd even given her a peck on the cheek for show before they had to go their separate ways. But that had been rushed, and hurrying, and he'd been able to focus on what he had to do during the day instead of on her.

But afterwards... Kaylee had been lovely in a way that she never seemed before, (she was always very pretty, but not usually 'lovely' as such,) and sparkling with wit, and dreadfully cold to him in a private way that nobody else could pick up. Part of that was that only he knew that she was playing a role as 'Juli Maren', and he was used to the silent recognition of their shared facade every time they made eye contact. Somehow that was gone. She was nobody else but Juli to him now, and he knew that Juli was hollow. (Or, well, Juli Maren was a real person, but she wasn't truly here, and Kaylee's act of putting on Juli's face was hollow.)

It had gotten so bad that he'd urged her to go back to their room. For a moment Kaylee had refused to go, but some part of her must have realized that this was a better opportunity to reach their objective than to continue socializing with him. In the room, she could continue the work of accessing and attacking the household Cortex network, which it seemed like they would need. And in meeting people and chatting without her, Simon was able to relax somewhat and even picked up a few tidbits of information that might be valuable.

He'd come back to their suite a bit on the early side, (finding his way without the light pointer, since Kaylee had borrowed it.) Kaylee had asked him a few questions about the genetic component to radiation burn therapy, mentioned that Inara had posted private comments to them on the local Cortex, (based on the real Maren's suggestions for doing that much without being traced, an aspect of the encrypted link back to their cabin and to Serenity,) and wished him good luck for tomorrow. More than anything else, Simon wanted to stay up late and joke with her as a friend, because they had been good friends, and he really needed one right now.

But after everything that had happened, he knew that he didn't have the right to ask it of her, that being his close friend and confidante was the one thing that Kaylee **couldn't** do for him now, as much as she might want to. So he had wasted little time in laying himself down to bed, and here he was with his free-floating anxieties, completely unable to get to sleep.

Had the two of them managed to completely bungle their entire future relationship, just because she did what she did and he said what he said? Would it be impossible for them to ever become friends again, or lovers or something in between? Perhaps Serenity would have to become a segregated zone when they got back.

When he had been an intern, two of the surgical residents had been in the middle of an affair, and then undergone a messy breakup, and for nearly a month they hadn't been able to be in the same room without snapping at each other. It had gotten increasingly touchy - the attending surgeons and then the chief of surgery had read them both the riot act without any lasting results, and the head resident had taken to juggling their schedules so that they would never be assigned to the same cases. Finally the cardiologist had managed to get a transfer to a prestigious fellowship hospital on the southern continent of Liann Jiun, and that had ended the whole business. They had never really resolved anything, and one of them left forever to keep everyone around them from going crazy or hurting them both.

If it came to that, of course, Simon would volunteer to leave the ship, rather than worry about driving Kaylee from it. She loved Serenity so much that Simon doubted he could ever really come between them in any case, and a little voice in the back of his head had been saying that as comfortable as the ship was for him, and as much as River seemed to like it, this was the time to be moving on.

But then, possibly he was just inventing trouble. This was obviously a stressful situation, and maybe Kaylee would forgive him, and they'd make the choice to move forward to something new or back to their old friendship, once the heist was resolved. That seemed reasonable, didn't it? He should probably make a point of not letting himself resent Kaylee for a bit of coldness, if the silent treatment was what it took for her to get through this situation.

From there, his thoughts flew further afield into guilty and fevered imaginings, what might have happened with Kaylee if he hadn't done the brake-squealing stop thing, or what just might develop later on if things went very well when they got back to the ship. More kisses, longer embraces, hearing her pant with passion and eagerness as he brought his hands into play, the deftness that she might show in stripping him of his clothes. He vividly pictured what she would look like without anything concealing her own nudity, how her skin might taste when he brought his lips to her, and if she would shudder in reaction to the contact the first time. He even went so far as to preview their first occasion making love, very sensitively, with rose-strewn clean sheets and doing what he could to show her he respected her and wanted her to be comfortable - before Kaylee's own exuberance managed to drive him a little bit out of his mind with passion...

Simon looked up, startled by the door clicking, and saw a thin stream of light spilling into the room from the open bedroom door. Kaylee stood across the threshold, a figure partly lit and partly shadowed, wearing only her appealingly thin delicates. "You - you shouldn't have come here, Kaylee," Simon muttered. He knew, beyond a doubt, why she had opened the door.

"Are - are you going to ask me to go away again, Simon?" she asked simply.

Simon did actually try to force the words out, but the sudden realization of how eager and ready his body was for her, just from mental imagery, defeated all of his willpower. "No," he admitted in a throaty whisper. "I'm going to ask you to come here."

She did, stepping towards the cot, and Simon reached out to her, not to her hand, which would have been well within his grasp, but for the sliver of bare skin between undershirt and boxer-style shorts. Just at that moment when he would have felt the smoothness of her, that sensation of skin on less-than-casual skin that he would happily have died for - his fingers stubbornly refused to make contact. But they weren't falling short, they - were they passing _through_ Kaylee?

Everything went swimmy and vague for a few seconds, and then Simon's world reassembled, in darkness except for starlight through the small window in the living room. (Because of the way the mansion was laid out, the bedroom had large windows and a view of the landing field, but the living room faced only onto a small interior courtyard above a dining hall. If they were several floors further down there would have been no window for the room at all.) Had his eyes been playing tricks on him when Kaylee closed the bedroom door?

He stared all around the dim room, looking under the cot, even activating a small portable light before he could admit the truth. Kaylee had never been here, had not opened the door. He had been far enough gone in lust and sorrow that he had actually imagined her and thought that it was really happening, until he had touched the phantasm of her and broken the spell. This would _never_ do. He had to find some way to put her out of his head, like she had apparently done for him.

He simply didn't know how she'd done it. Would Kaylee tell him the secret if he asked?

He lay back, hoping that sleep would eventually come. He **couldn't** go and talk to her now, in this state of mind. That would obviously lead to something incredibly bad...


	7. Chapter 7

Kaylee woke up very early, with the twilight just starting to brighten outside the windows, and she was feeling restless. Part of it was excitement - very late the last night, after Simon had gone to bed, she'd found something that they might just be able to use against the security systems... the old simulations trick. In order to be sure that his own personal security staff was at top readiness, Bentley insisted on regular scenario drilling, and as part of that, the monitors could show constructed footage that had been provided by the makers of an expansion software pack, integrated with what the security cameras were really picking up at the time.

No drill had been scheduled for the duration of the conference, for obvious reasons. But Kaylee had found the expansion program, had managed to bypass the moderately strong security precautions against triggering it without authorization, (with the help of a little code decryption doohickey that she'd actually got from Niska's people before they realized what a sick little cat he was,) and explored some of its potentialities. What's more, she'd managed to figure out that the Alliance people were deeply enough into the same surveillance network that whatever fakes she fed in, they would see them too. If a massive distraction could help them with the heist, (and seriously, when would it not?) then that she could provide.

She'd sent the word to Mal, Inara, and Serenity about what she'd found, asking about when and how they thought it could best be put to use, and hadn't gotten any reply back in an hour, before going to sleep herself. That had been - only around five hours ago, but she didn't feel like she could stay in bed for any longer, so she got out of the bed and headed over to the cortex interface directly. About halfway there, she just made out a quiet moan or sigh from the direction of the living room.

That simple sound, hardly anything above the background noise of the sleeping giant mansion, managed to electrify her nonetheless, simply because she knew that it came from Simon. Why did things still work like that? He'd made it clear, in so many little ways, that they should only be partners for as long as this job lasted - and heist partners didn't in general have to stop and shiver every time they heard each other breathe. (It would make sense in some situations to signal the other person that _they_ should stop when you heard them breathing, until they calmed down, because nobody else should be overhearing the breathing of a thief. But that didn't apply here, certainly.)

Of course, she should just carry on to the cortex, or maybe go to the bathroom. Both of those courses of action would be much better than opening the living room door and taking a peek, for certain. Especially if the reason that Simon had moaned was because he was waking up or awake, the fact that she was checking on him could get awkward, and even if he was still asleep and never knew that she was watching him, it wasn't really a healthy thing for her to be doing.

Nevertheless, she couldn't resist opening the door. Simon was asleep, although he did seem to be stirring, or at least turning about a little. She **was** able to keep herself from watching him for long, and made it to the Cortex screen quickly enough. There were two messages waiting.

To: Kaylee

From: Mal

Copy to: Serenity

Good work. Inara got a look at the security central this afternoon, so maybe the two of you should meet up privately to compare impressions if we can find a way to arrange that without being too suspicious. I've managed to acquire some details on the schedules for the laboratories, (attached,) that Simon can review, and answer the questions that I tagged in green highlighter.

I know that the progress feels slow, but we do have some time. Steady on.

To: Kaylee, Mal

From: Serenity

Copying okay here. Remember to call in advance of when the job is going to go down, so that we can... get down to the surface, and be ready to pick you up. Best of luck, Wash.

"What's up?"

Kaylee looked up, expecting Simon to be at the living room door. (A bare-chested Simon, somehow, though she wasn't quite sure how she'd gotten to that one, considering that she'd just seen him wearing a pyjama shirt. Maybe she'd just **hoped** that he'd take it off.) But there was nobody in the room with her. Had she heard something from the corridor outside? That was a bit worrying actually - if the soundproofing wasn't too good one way in the room, did that mean that they could have been overheard as well?

"Whazzup?"

There it was again, and sounded much more like a crazed parrot than Simon, or anybody else she'd expect to be in the corridor outside. Where was it? "I... I'm doing fine," she said out loud, feeling very stupid, "but kind of confused. Where are you?"

"_Whaa-zzup_?"

Kaylee only just restrained herself from screaming on the grounds that it would wake Simon, and she'd feel very foolish for having disturbed him when the whole thing got sorted out. On nothing more than this blind frustration she closed the message windows - and saw an annoying little cartoon face that once again asked her "whazup?" in an annoying voice. Some sort of a Cortex pop-under? How had it gotten to her terminal, when all she'd done was access the secure messages? Had the spambots managed to compromise the Maren's cortex source?

More importantly, how could she shut the darn thing up? Just clicking on a spam-ware pop-under could give it a handle to invade the rest of your screen, and the usual zappers that she'd pre-installed back on Serenity weren't available here. She could probably manage to get a zapper off of the Cortex, but there had to be a different way to do it, a bit more simply - think, what was it? Oh, right - start with the running jobs list, do an 'identify by icon', and - yes. That was the job ID; now kill it, for sure. Not quite as impressive as using a virtual handgun to shoot the annoying face and watch it sort of die, but it had vanished, and that was the important thing.

"Thank you." She spun around, and this time it actually _was_ Simon. No bare chest, but heck - she should probably be glad for that much. "Did you do anything to tempt fate, or did he just creep in anyway?"

"Off the secure link with - our friends," Kaylee said softly. "Not a big deal. If Wash and Zoe are getting the same thing, then maybe they can root it out - or the Marens."

"Alright."

"Do you want the Privacy first today?" she asked him. "Or... Mal sent you some schedule stuff to look at."

"I'd probably better shower beforehand, so that I'm awake," he told her. "Thanks. And - it might be adding insult just to say this, but... I miss the give and take of our friendship, ever since - the big incident. It might be asking for a lot, to get back to that and ignore the hippopotamus lying between us, but... I want to try if you can."

Something about this request completely melted Kaylee's heart in an affectionate and friendly way, but still she wasn't sure. "Isn't there a way to lure the hippo into the next room, or at least the corner?"

"Food maybe. Hippos are usually hungry," Simon said offhandedly, and laughed quietly. And then he turned to go to the bathroom - yes, stripping off his shirt as he went. The bare chest was pointed away from Kaylee, but what she saw of his back muscles was nearly as impressive. How was Simon in such good shape, considering that he never seemed to pump iron like Jayne did, or even do that much that was good exercise?

As the shower ran in the Privacy, Kaylee was too distracted to gather clothes or consider her hair, so she opened up a secure file and started to consider weak points in the heist plan so far. With the security system addressed, at least partially, and Mal working the schedule for a good time, there was still the question of getting enough people to the South wing to carry the engine out of the mansion itself, and then getting it out. Based on what little Simon had told her of the location of the laboratory where he'd done work yesterday, it would be much easier to go to an exterior exit in the south wing - maybe just one staircase down and around eighty feet, compared to getting back into the Main house. Once they were out there, they'd need to get it to the shuttle, though - no, fly the shuttle around the building to make the rendezvous...

"All yours," Simon volunteered, and she looked up. Yeah, bare chest; why did it affect her so much? Definitely nice... definition, but... she shook her head, got up without even closing the file, and rushed for the Privacy door herself, starting the shower spray going again as quickly as possible.

#

"Charles, wake up."

"Huh?"

"Jayne." The word was a fierce whisper that managed to get Jayne Cobb to shake himself to more awareness of his surroundings. He - he was sitting at the kitchen table, with the video player lying there in front of him, inches away from his hand.

"Oh, Gorram it." He looked up, and Book's face dialled into focus. "Did - did you check on the Marens?"

"Um, no, I wanted to see if I could wake you first. Just a moment," the Shepherd said, and walked quietly away. Jayne immediately fumbled for his gun, though he wasn't quite sure how likely any situation where he would be forced to use it immediately could possibly be. He blinked furiously, not letting his eyes close for long, as Book made his way to the master bedroom door, quietly opened it, and crept inside. After a pause, he emerged again on the balls of his feet, swung the door back closed, and returned to the kitchen. "Yes, both in the bed, and both asleep. I even verified that they were real people instead of pillows under the covers or some trick like that. Didn't get a facial ID from Rickard, but it seems unlikely that he would have managed to find somebody else to take his place all the way out here..."

"Yeah, yeah, okay," Jayne muttered. He still felt incredibly foolish about falling asleep on watch, but if himself and Book were unhurt, and the Marens had not escaped, there didn't seem to be any harm done or foul. And of anybody who might have caught him asleep at the switch, Derrial Book was the only one who would probably never tell the tale, or use it for his own advantage later. That was just the kind of kind, noble guy that he was. "I... I'm trying to figure out when I nodded off. Remember switching to a new program at around 0400 local time, because I was wondering if the battery would last for any longer..." It was 0525 now, according to the chrono readout on the electronic stove. "Not too bad I suppose. Hey, wait a second. I... I can't be sure, but I think that the little woman was in here."

"Miz Maren?" Book asked quietly, pulling up another chair at the table and sitting down.

"Yes. Juli. She... she was asking me about my past - or was that the night before?"

"Juli Maren was asking you about your true identity... the night before this night just past?" Book repeated.

"Yeah." Suddenly I realized something. "Yes, I shoulda mentioned that before now, but it didn't seem that important. Maybe I'm just remembering the same thing all over again..." He reached out to grab the video player, and then something else occurred to him. "Coffee. She fixed a mug of coffee for me to drink, and that _wasn't_ a full day and more ago."

"No mugs on the table," Book pointed out. Jayne shot him a nasty look. "I'm just saying. If you really did drink a mug of coffee, then it was cleared away. Might you have done that yourself?"

"I... I don't remember it. Mighta put it in the sink." Book got up again. "No, you don't really need to look for it."

"Yes, but... but I'm not sure. There seems to be a minor mystery. Perhaps the answer is nothing more than you slipping off to sleep early at the end of your third night watch, but, if there's anything else going on here, I would want to know, wouldn't you?" Jayne shrugged his acceptance, and Book inspected the sink area. "No mugs in the sink, but these two were propped up among the other items drying in the drain rack. Do they look familiar?" He held up two brightly patterned cups.

"Yeah, umm... I was using the one with the Reaver design on it, though that did seem odd even to me." Book chuckled at the way Jayne had put that. "And - and Juli was taking something from the woodland scene. Not tea - hot sweet lemon or something?"

"Interesting," Book admitted. "It would seem that she made a point of cleaning up after you nodded off, then. Perhaps we should ask her about her midnight visit."

"Why?" Jayne asked. "Don't - don't bring it up in front of her husband. Rickard ain't the possessive type, but still, he might take this amiss."

"Wouldn't you want to know, if you were in his place, Jayne?" Book asked softly. "If Juli was your wife?"

"Hahahe." The laugh emerged from Jayne automatically. "Well, maybe I would at that, but that doesn't mean that I'd have a right to know, if she weren't crossing the line. Listen, we can talk to her, as long as Rickard's otherwise occupied, and as long as I'm there." He yawned. "Which probably means not right away, if that's alright."

"By all means, get you to your bed," Book said, but as Jayne got up, he suddenly reached out and took Jayne's fingers in his, and looked deeply into the other man's eyes with slightly less than the usual affection, and a serious, probing gaze.

"What, what is it?"

"Just - just trying to see if I could recognize the signs of anything that might have helped put you to sleep," Book whispered. "From in the coffee."

"Huh? Coffee doesn't put you to sleep, it's got caffeine in it," Jayne muttered.

"Ordinarily that is true, yes."

"You - you think that she mighta slipped something in the coffee to make me drift off?" Jayne asked him, still confused, keeping his voice down. "But - but why? If she wasn't doing it to - to get the jump on us, or sneak away..." Something else occurred to him. "She coulda used the Cortex link to call for help, call the local Feds or police force. We didn't get it locked out from them."

"No, I suppose that's true," Book said, frowning slightly. "But that would be to turn this situation from something like having unexpected strange guests over for several days, into an armed hostage situation - with Juli herself in the role of one of the hostages. I'm not sure that would make sense in her mind. If she really did want to be rid of us, then trying to leave in the middle of the night would seem much more sensible."

"Except that she knows I'm an excellent tracker," Jayne put in.

"She does, does she?" That probing look was in Book's face again.

"Well, I hinted at it, at least... she wanted to hear stories, and I didn't exactly tell her the truth, but..."

"I see," Book told him. "Well, I may not be able to find traces of Cortex activity if either of the Marens wanted to cover themselves, but I shall make the attempt. And something else has occurred to me."

"What's that?" Jayne asked.

"If Juli Maren wanted to find out more details of your background, on the basis of a personal curiosity, then maybe what she put into your coffee was just to make you more compliant in that respect, and sleep was an unintended side effect."

Jayne considered that. "Yeah, maybe you're right. Shoulda been more careful and not taken the drink that she was offering me, perhaps?"

"Maybe. But it doesn't look like this will imperil the mission. If she went to such lengths to find out this information, somehow I suspect that she might not give it up to Alliance investigators so easily." There was a moment's silence. "Go to bed, Jayne."

"Yessir."

Once Jayne was in the guest room, Book considered for a few minutes, and then put on some porridge to cook and water for tea. He'd let the Marens wake up and come to him on their own schedule.

#

Mal watched closely on the closed-circuit monitors as Simon and eight other researchers started to 'put the lab to bed' for the day. Soon they would be coming back through the South wing, and he wanted to check on something. The last time this had happened, apparently, those watching had been able to follow their return nearly all the way back, jumping from camera to camera. Mal hadn't been watching, but had been told this much by one of the other 'observers' in the intermission of some dreadfully boring live music performance - dozens of fiddles without spirit to them, and funny wind-tootlers, and so on.

But if he could match the route to the blueprints that Inara had gotten a hold of, and identify exactly where the lab was, then not only would he know where they'd have to go to grab the engine, but he'd be able to figure out the route outside, and guess if he and Simon, working together, could carry the thing that far. Let's see, ah, yes, there the first of them go, out the door, and to the left, then...

It was hard to reconstruct a bunch of glimpses from different cameras on different screens into a single route, but Mal had had a guess of where they might have been starting from, and what he was likely to see at each step, so he was pretty satisfied with the results at the end. Once Simon had made his way back through the security checkpoint, Mal left the observation room, and set about trying to track down Inara. It would have been convenient if the little light pointers could home on each other, but that might also be frustrating. (Of course, they probably had computer tracking gizmos inside them, so when they didn't want security to know what they were up to, all of them would have to be prepared to leave them behind and make their own way through the mansion.)

When he finally caught up with Inara, he saw that she was part of a chatting crowd that also included Kaylee, and so he was reluctant to join in, just in case. So he grabbed a few simple things off a buffet table and headed back to his own suite. Simon had posted his observations about the laboratory layout and scheduling, so things were definitely starting to fall into place. Mal checked the blueprint files, and noted the laboratory location on them. Then he went a bit further into the Cortex, and found a message waiting from Book. He didn't start reading it until the annoying 'whazzup' face had appeared and Mal zapped it away with some satisfaction.

To: Mal, Kaylee, Serenity

From: Book

I'm not sure how much concern this is, but there are some disturbing developments between Juli Maren and Jayne. Jayne's been pulling all-night watch duty, and the last two nights Juli got up in the middle of the night to speak with him, asking about his past and so on. First time, he assured me that he didn't reveal anything. Second time around, Juli apparently drugged his coffee, and he didn't seem to remember everything that happened very clearly. I believe that she might be infatuated with him, and unhappy with her marriage to Rickard.

Oh, great, Mal thought to himself. Why do the plans **never** go smooth? On impulse, he typed out a response, encouraging Book to take over the night watch shift himself, so that if Juli Maren wanted to interact with Jayne, she'd have to do it while her husband was awake as well. Then he logged off the cortex and lay down onto the bed to think for a moment.

Juli Maren had a thing for Jayne? She certainly wasn't his usual type - brilliant, pretty in a girl-next-door way, acid-tongued yet possessed of a certain sophistication. And no matter what Book had said about an unhappy marriage, Mal was also upset at the notion that their visit might prove to be the splitting wedge. How would Kaylee react when she read that, since she had some little tendency towards the starry-eyed romanticness, and it had really been her brainwave to start the whole thing? Not to mention, playing Juli's part here at the conference, she had probably been feeling some sympathy for the woman, but Kaylee did **not** feel that way about Jayne herself. Not since Simon had showed up, certainly...

Well, dwelling on this wasn't helping the mission, though. What could he do that **was** helpful? Not meeting with Inara, probably, or trying to find Simon... Perhaps he should just get an advance on his sleep, in case there was middle-of-the-night action anytime soon. Yeah, that was a notion. Of course, he'd need to relax a bit more before he could nod off. Maybe - did they have some of those sleeping pills that Juli Maren had sent along? Kaylee and Simon had taken most of them, for snoozing in that little gravity sled, but...

He managed to find one in Inara's bag, and swallowed it with water from the Privacy sink. Could hardly manage to stumble his way back to the bed before keeling over.

#

"Alright, this is looking promising," Inara said, smiling at Kaylee. "Not only can you introduce new visual elements, it looks like by recycling old footage, you can essentially blank us out from certain security cameras at certain times, so that as long as we stick to a travelling schedule they won't be able to see us moving or doing anything else."

"Yeah, that'll be key," Kaylee admitted. "Of course, it probably won't last too long before they figure out that something is wrong, but ideally they won't have too much time to sit and think. Sudden pandemonium is the effect we want to achieve."

"Alright." Inara got up from the chair that she'd been sitting in, next to Kaylee in front of the Cortex screen, and sat on the edge of the bed. "I... I realize that tempers flared somewhat the last time, but - would it be proper to inquire about a return to the topic of... of you and Simon being on this mission together? And, for that matter, myself and Mal."

Kaylee looked up, and her face flicked between a sad frown and a smile. "Oh, I'm really sorry for what I said, first off, 'Nara. You - you were just trying to warn me about the dangers of my own heart, and - and I was so excited and keyed up for everything that I couldn't even bear to listen. You... you were right. Things between Simon and me have gotten turned upside down and halfway back again... and yes, I think that I could use your advice in figuring out what's what, and what I should be doing about it." She paused. "But - but if you're having trouble with Mal too, then maybe you should go first."

"I... I think that you might have the greater need," Inara allowed. "It's been a bit strange, sleeping next to him, and pretending to everybody that he's a client, which suggests that we're - well, you know. But, you know, I'm managing."

"Sounds like you were right after all, then," Kaylee said with a sigh. "And yet another example of my foolishness, that I thought you was transferring your own baggage onto me. Well, let's see. The ride over wasn't too bad, except for this weird dream that I had after I took the knockout pill. That - that I'd lost my memory, and woke up already at the conference for more than a week, and Simon and I had already... had sex, and that sort of thing. He told me that playing at being married had given our feelings a chance to express themselves. In the dream."

"Ahh, I see." Inara nodded. "They may say 'in hypnos, veritas,' but you probably don't need to ascribe more to a dream than a jumbled re-expression of the desires that you probably already knew that you had."

"Hypnos veritas?" Kaylee repeated.

"In sleep, there is truth," Inara translated. "Or something like that."

"Oh, okay. Yeah, but I guess I was thinking of the dream when... we were studying, getting ready for the first real day, and I kissed him. Woulda taken things even further, but - but he said that while the important mission was going on, we couldn't either of us get distracted by other stuff. I saw his point, but still - it was hard, hearing that, and I guess things got frosty for a day and a night - or two nights and a day, rather. This morning, he said that he missing having his good friend here with him and if we could get back to that. I said that I'd try - but we haven't really spent much time together since then."

"Hmm," Inara considered. "As you said, his point is a reasonable one, and focusing on the friendship aspect of your connection with him does seem like a reasonable strategy for proceeding. Remember that after being through something like this, he probably isn't going to remain blind to your intentions afterwards, so pressing the point is just counter-productive." Inara giggled softly. "And fantasy can be a great outlet for... for your untimely urges, if it's handled right."

"Mmm, huh?" Kaylee turned her seat around to face the bed directly. "How's that? Doesn't it just help you to dwell on whatever you're fantasizing about, so that you can't even get it out of your head when you need to?"

"Well, that's where it's important to do it right," Inara told her with a knowing smile. "You have to banish guilt entirely, embrace the moment completely when you're thinking about... Simon, and simply allow those thoughts to pass when you're actually working with him. There are a few meditation techniques that I can teach you to counterpoint the technique too."

"Hmm." Kaylee thought about it. "Okay, alright. Have you ever used this... technique, on someone who I might know?"

"Oh, more than one." Kaylee boggled slightly. "What, you think that the only one in the crew who I have erotic thoughts about could possibly be Mal? Wash, for instance, is **very** cute and obviously in possession of a talented set of hands. Obviously, I could never act on that, but no reason a girl can't dream."

"Huh." Kaylee sighed. "Alright, no time like the present. What do I do?"

"Why don't you lie down on the bed," Inara suggested, getting up. "And I don't think that I need to tell you how to get started with fantasizing."

"Umm, no, of course not. Do - do I have to tell you what I'm picturing?" Kaylee sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, as if ready to spring right back up again.

"No, not if you don't feel comfortable." So Kaylee spread out, on her back, closed her eyes, and almost instantly in her mind Simon was there with her, propped up on an elbow and watching her from the side. He brushed his fingers through her hair and across her cheek, then bent down and kissed her tenderly. Kaylee reached up, almost believing that she could feel the strength of his shoulder in her palm, and things proceeded quickly from there.

#

When Inara finally left Kaylee and Simon's suite, the arranged time for Simon to come by and pick her up for the evening buffet banquet had almost come, and Kaylee was taking advantage of the privacy to clean up and cover the tracks of what she had been doing while fantasizing. Inara checked the buffet banquet herself, but started to wonder what was up when she couldn't find Mal. She asked a few questions, found out that he'd been scarce ever since leaving the observation room that afternoon, and decided to try in their suite, to see if he was working on the Cortex.

He was and he wasn't, in that order. Inara was rather surprised to see Mal lying on his side of the bed, shoes and all clothes on. Carefully exploring the rest of the room, she noticed the container of sleeping caplets on the bathroom counter, and that set her mind somewhat at ease. Quietly she opened up the Cortex interface herself, with the sound turned all the way down in case the 'whazzup' face was lurking again, and caught up on all the messages that Mal must have read himself. She was rather curious what Mal had thought about the Jayne and Juli thing, but had to admit that she didn't feel too surprised herself.

And with that, something drew her back towards Mal. The things Kaylee had mentioned about having strange dreams after taking one of those sleeping capsule intrigued her, but she wasn't really interested in having any herself, even if this was a good time to go down for a nap. Still, there was something else that she was tempted to do, but couldn't quite tell what it was offhand, so she kept staring at Mal's face as she struggled to put it into focus.

So deeply asleep like this, Mal reminded Inara of that time when she'd found him after Saffron(/Bridget/Yolanda) had knocked him out with the goodnight kiss. She had been so relieved to know that he was alive and not seriously hurt that she'd kissed him herself, unwittingly got some of the knockout compound on her own lips, and more or less passed out. As far as Inara knew, Mal still hadn't figured out the exact sequence of events there, and she wasn't sure if he ever would work it out. But at this moment...

Knowing that it was safe, Inara bent down and once more kissed Mal's unresponsive lips, putting as much energy and feeling as she could into the contact under the circumstances. This time, she didn't grow woozy and faint herself, but after she had straightened up again, Mal did something that she hadn't expected and stirred, like the slumbering lovely wakened by a Prince Charming. (Or Princess, as the case might be.) "Umm... Inara. Hey."

"Hello, Mal. Good to see that you're not down for the night."

"Not so sure about that," he muttered. "Did... did you just kiss me good morning?"

Hoping that he wouldn't be seeing clearly enough to spot her broad grin, Inara replied, "No, of course not."

"Good. Glad that we got that cleared up. Keep on with whatever it was that you were doing, then," Mal muttered, and then rolled over onto his other side, facing away from her. Inara checked by circling around to that side of the room, behind the bed, and by then his eyes were closed again.

She didn't press her luck, but pulled out a pad and a pen from her suitcase and started drawing out ideas and possibly movements on a rough schematic of the house. It was hard to keep track of so many floors on any two-dimensional medium, though.

#

"Santiago calling Serenity!"

Wash groaned - he'd finally gotten a good hand, and now Zoe was going to insist that the deal should be scratched. But maybe just... he headed over to the intercom panel, wearing only his pants and undershorts, (the match of Strip Rummy having gotten to that point by now,) and pressed a series of buttons, hoping that the rest of the system had been arranged so that he could route the audio down through to here.

"Serenity here... is this Jorge?"

"Washburn! Yeah, hello man. Is Reynolds around?"

Wash shot one look at Zoe, (she was wearing a few more clothes than he was, which was why he had been looking forward to one deal going his way, when he could have doubled or tripled the stakes,) and she shrugged. "Sorry, Jorge, Mal's off, and I'm under strict instructions not to bother him with anything short of the destruction of a planet, preferably whichever one he's standing on, which I'm not inclined to tell you in case you could actually arrange the destruction." Jorge just laughed at Wash's ramble. "I can give you Zoe."

"As much as I'd normally love to hear those words, mi amigo, I think I'll stick with you for now because you amuse me so much, though I'm sure that your fine lady wife is standing nearby and listening. First off, you're not accomplishing much with us by stonewalling. I know that Mal took the job for the Baty engine, and if he's not on board the ship, I'm going to guess that he's already undercover at the conference. Now, for some reason, Badger has a confidence in Mal's performance and in his team. Because Mal said that he didn't want interference, Badger has called off every other crew from trying for the engine. But, you see, me and my people are independent contractors, the same as you, and I don't see any reason why we should take the warning. If we get that engine prototype, then Badger will deal with us, just the same as he'd deal with you. Badger might not want to get Reynolds angry by refusing to 'call off the troops', but for anybody not on Badger's own direct payroll, that's not an order with a lot of teeth in it. Do you get what I'm saying?"

"Umm... yes, actually I do understand what you're saying," Wash said, his mind racing. "But why are you calling us to talk about this decision that you've made? It doesn't sound like you're wanting to open a casual dialog about the matter."

"If you're fishing for a payoff to stay out of the deal, then you can talk to me, Jorge," Zoe put in. Frantically Wash cut a hand over his throat, but Zoe just nodded and smiled, her silent version of 'trust me; I know what I'm doing.' "I may not offer you what you want to be getting, but I think I'd be as generous as Mal would be."

Jorge laughed over the signal. "No, no Zoe, nothing like that. Just wanted to make sure that he got this message: I'm not going in there to declare war on his people. If he steers clear of what I'm trying to do, then none of you get hurt. Get in our way, and... Well, it would be a mad, terrible idea to be in our way. Get the picture?" And all of a sudden there was nothing but dead air.

"Okay, I've got a wild notion," Wash muttered, after he'd made sure that they weren't broadcasting anymore. "There's still something that hasn't fallen into place in the master plan, and I think that Jorge making his move just might be the element that they need. If that's it, we'll need to follow the 'Santiago' down into Bellerophon atmosphere fairly closely."

"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing," Zoe agreed. "That's why I made a point to ask him that thing about a payoff - I didn't think he would want one, and I wasn't going to seriously offer him one, but it seemed like a good attempt to make him not realize we were barking down this trail. Better get on the Cortex and talk to Mal and Kaylee. If they don't check in in time, and Jorge starts making his move, we might need to use the pens to signal him."

"Right," Wash said, thinking it over. "I'll go up to the cockpit to see what they're doing. If Santiago could spot us, I can spot them too."

"Good boy," Zoe told him with a little smile. As Wash dressed, (the game nearly forgotten,) he saw River coming out of her room area and heading forward as well. Wouldn't hurt for her to be hanging around while he looked for the other ship. Maybe she'd even try to help out.

#

"You dance beautifully, Miz Maren," Simon whispered into Kaylee's ear as they moved together, arm in arm, across the floor.

"Oh, you haven't seen anything yet," she replied, but didn't elaborate much. They danced away in silence, and then Simon realized that the song was starting to wrap up.

"Let's go back to the table once this one's done," he suggested.

"Come on, I... I know that it isn't doing anything particularly helpful, but I love the dancing so much. One more number..."

"No, I've had enough. Please." Simon wasn't feeling that tired, in fact, he did sense himself being energized from moving to the music himself, but one particular example of that was mostly the problem. If Kaylee felt or otherwise noticed anything stirring in his pants, from holding her curvy body so close to him - it would ruin everything that they'd managed to sort out in terms of the friendship thing.

After a moment, Kaylee nodded, and she led the way back to the table when a new musical number began, a Latin tango sort of thing with a very passionate beat. "There you go, sweetie," Kaylee said, smiling broadly and helping him into his chair like he was some sort of an invalid. "Do you want me to grab you something more from the buffet table?"

The question was faintly overbearing, but he didn't actually mind having a little while to recover from Kaylee's presence before she sat next to him again, so he told her, "Yes, anything, whatever you think I'll like." She winked and headed off, leaving Simon to sit there and hope that if he looked fierce enough, nobody would come up and talk to him about anything. The tactic seemed to work, even when he closed his eyes for a moment.

"Okay, here you go." He looked up and saw - nothing, because Kaylee had just sat herself down next to him. There was a plate in front of him, with a pile of yellow corn kernels, a slab of bread easily two inches thick and liberally doused with a thick brown-green that had a greenish tinge and little chunks of various stuff in it. The glass of sparkling water that he'd been working on before the dancing was still mostly full.

"Well, first things first..." He took a forkful of the corn, which was great - just a nice touch of butter and salt in it. "Mmm. Now, what's the rest of this stuff?"

"Huh?" Kaylee leaned close, dropping her voice and showing off cleavage without looking like she was meaning to. "It's a slice of home-style bread with a hamburger, veggies, and gravy sauce. I thought you'd really like it."

"They really had this up at the buffet?" Simon asked, though he wasn't sure why he was making such a point. It wasn't like there was anywhere else that she'd have gotten it from.

"Well, yeah." Sure enough, Kaylee was starting to sound a little bit hurt. "It's all self-serve. You can slice your own bread from the loaf, nearly fresh out of the ovens, and then pick a sauce and ladle it on."

"Okay, okay," Simon said. "Umm - well okay, this sounds a bit strange, but I'm not sure how to eat it. It looks like it would be very sloppy if I picked the bread up in my hands and munched like an open-faced sandwich, but..."

"Well, no, that's just for the very adventurous, and probably not in such polite company," she assured him. "You can cut squares of the bread out with a knife and fork, eat them with the fork. Then work on the leftover sauce with a spoon" Simon tried this, following her example, because she had a similar slice of her own - and smiled in appreciation.

"Yeah, it's an interesting combination of flavours, but..."

"Yeah, what is it... Rickard?"

"What is it about the sauce that gives it that green tinge?"

"Hmm, I'm not sure," Kaylee admitted. "Maybe they mix pureed peas or green beans into it."

"Oh, yeah, okay."

After finishing those platefuls, and sharing a bit of small talk with a few people that Simon couldn't remember meeting, they walked hand in hand towards the double doors. Simon couldn't entirely shut out his awareness of the way Kaylee looked in a little black dress, something with a bit of slink to it as Zoe might have said, her hair tightly curled and flowing to her shoulders. Just as they were about to leave, there was a faint whistling sound in an unusual pitch pattern, something that Simon didn't really pay attention to until Kaylee whipped her head around, looking for the source of the noise, which got Simon curious too. She pushed through the crowd, a puzzled expression on her face, until they both caught sight of Mal and Inara, in a tight knot with a few other people.

Mal was gesturing emphatically, in fact he seemed to be acting out some kind of impromptu charade, but after he repeated a series of motions a few times, Kaylee nodded emphatically and started dragging Simon away again, towards the doors. "What, what is it?" he asked.

"I just can't wait for your touch, for your kisses," she said in a sort of loud stage voice. "Can't wait until we get back up to our room."

Oh, brother. But if she was doing this as a way of playing to the crowd, as it were, instead of for her own self, then he couldn't complain - it was 'on the job.' As soon as they were out of the ballroom, she pushed him up against the wall, started to delicately lick at his neck, and whispered. "What Mal was signing - it was a message for me, and for me to relay on to you."

"Oh, okay," he groaned back softly. "What does he have to say?"

"Plans change. Tonight. Cortex."

"Ohh." Simon considered. "Why couldn't this wait until we were back in the suite?"

"I wanted to let you know how serious I was," Kaylee said, leaning forward to plant a wet kiss onto his neck. "Let's go, now."

And he led the way up to their suite, wondering what would be waiting for them on the Cortex screen.


	8. Chapter 8

"Okay." Mal sat back in the armchair, moaned softly, and then fixed Inara with a hard stare. "Talk me through it again."

"Mal?"

"I need to know that you understand it for yourself."

Inara sighed a bit huffily, but nodded and continued. "Jorge's crew on the 'Santiago' have already broken atmosphere, heading right this way. We're not sure on the details, but this head-on dive approach seems to suggest that they have some hardware that's meant to get them past whatever anti-air defences the Alliance is counting on to prevent a fly-by-night robbery. Wash and Zoe's guess is that they won't be stupid enough to fire on the main house or the south wing. Casualties would be too high here at the central building, and in the south, they'd risk crushing the engine that they've come for."

"Right," Mal agreed, keeping one eye on his chrono.

"So they're probably going to land on the roof of the South wing, or next to it, and go in, heavily armed, from there. We can't outfight them ourselves, so if we want to get the thing, we're going to have to beat them to it, and use their approach as an extra distraction. When we move, we move in two teams. You and Simon are going to go south, and slip through one of the supposedly blocked-off passages through to the South wing, timing it so that you go through there just as the Santiago approaches the building. I'm to meet up with Kaylee, get out via the West entrance to the main house, get my shuttle, and land it outside a door on the southeast corner of the South wing."

"Yep," Mal said, smiling at her.

"Kaylee's got the blanking routine with old footage set up to cover all of our movements on the security cameras, but because we're going to have to move early, and we don't want to create an enormous diversion right away, there's a chance that they'll notice that something's wrong with the cameras. To cover things as simply as possible with little chance of an escalation out of hand, Simon has got something prepared that will cause a little bit of disruption in the Crystal ballroom."

"Okay, anything else?"

Inara thought. "That's pretty much it. You guys, I guess, are going to have to improvise a bit when it comes to moving the engine safely. Are you sure that you don't want Kaylee coming with you as well?"

"I'd love to take her," Mal insisted, "but you do need someone watching your back in case anything goes wrong."

"There's a lot less likely to go wrong if I'm just heading outside for a breath of fresh air by myself, instead of being seen with a scientific delegate. We still can't quickly and easily explain how I know Juli Maren."

Mal wavered. "Does it really matter by this point?"

"You'll need Kaylee in the lab. She could be invaluable in half a dozen ways, easily."

Mal thought about that a second. "Okay, I'm sold. And if you're convinced that it's so innocent-looking, you heading down for a walk, then maybe you don't need to be covered on the security system? Give them less fake footage to possibly spot?"

"Alright, I'll get on the Cortex link and let Kaylee know about the change," Inara said, crossing the room from bed to desk. "Oh, that does remind me - Kaylee worked out these microwave link remote control thingees that they're unlikely to spot in an hour or two, to adjust the timing of the security system stuff, because we don't know just when Santiago will get here, and everything depends on that." She cocked her head. "How are you going to tell when Santiago is here? Will you be able to hear it from inside the building?"

"Well, there's that, but also, Zoe will be keeping me informed via the signal pen. We've established a new code for it," Mal said.

"Gotcha. And between Kaylee and Zoe, they've also worked out unlock codes to a few important doors you're going to run into along the way, like the laboratory, and the stairwell in the south wing."

"Yep. They do good work," Mal had to admit.

"So, which passageway are you using to get to the South wing, and how are you unblocking it?" Inara asked.

"Furthest from the place the Feds will be guarding, or nearly. Right-hand corridor on the fourth level, where the main corridor has been blocked by a solid wood wall, fused into the real walls, floor, and ceiling. We wouldn't be able to break it down or shoot it apart in the time that we had, but there's actually another way through. That's something that the Marens happened to mention."

"You know, when Badger pays us, we're going to have to pay the Marens five or ten percent," Inara commented. "That'd be only fair."

"I think that we have slightly different definitions of fair play," Mal joked. "We'll talk about it. In any event, the Badger money isn't going to come soon or in a big lump. After Kaylee found the Maren connection, I re-negotiated to get a share of what **he** makes out of the engine. I have enough faith in his business skills to know that's going to be worth a mint."

Inara turned her upper body around in the chair to stare at Mal. "And... and what about the skills a man like Badger has to hide the money he sees from the engine. Do you have any guarantees, like the right to arrange audits? Or do you just trust Badger to be as good as his word, to actually say he made nine hundred million when he makes nine hundred million?"

"Oh... I guess I hadn't thought of that," Mal admitted. "Usually when we hold out for a cut, it's more immediate and, well, concrete I guess. I realized that this would be a little iffier, but hadn't thought of that - accounting stuff." He sighed. "I... I think I have a little leeway to renegotiate the agreement somewhat, if we _do_ get the goods, before we hand it back over to the Badge. Do - do you think you could help out with the business side of it? Help - help me figure out just what I should be asking for?"

Inara cocked her head slightly as she looked at him. "I... yes, I'd be happy to. Thank you for asking." She turned back to the Cortex screen. "Kaylee must have been online and just waiting for any late-breaking updates. She's confirmed the change of plans, will stick with Simon and they'll meet you at the agreed-on rendezvous point."

"Good, then that's something going right at least," Mal said with a smile. "We're getting fairly close to the moment of launch." He got up. "Good luck, Inara, and **please** stay out of trouble as much as you can."

"Definitely, on one condition." She got up and hugged him tight. "That you make me the same promise."

Mal stepped back slightly, which made Inara's heart ache slightly, but then she realized it was necessary so that he could take her face in his hands. "I will stay out of the line of fire, I will take care of myself, and I will **come back** to you, Inara Serra."

The sincere feeling in those plainly spoken words knocked the wind out of Inara. Part of her wanted to say that he was making too much of this, that he should make it back for himself, and not for her sake, that she wasn't even sure what they would be to each other when they got back to Serenity. But all that made it out of her mouth was, 'Thank you, mia Cara."

He smiled a little, and she wondered if he knew what the words meant. Mal Reynolds wasn't ignorant or uneducated, no matter what he sometimes liked to pretend. "Remember, if some guard gives you a hard time, your first and best option is turning on the charm. It might not seem dignified, but that's your best strength and the safest to boot."

"Hey, watch it," Inara chuckled. "For some common alley slattern, that might be the truth. But one of the most important parts of Companion training is the art of being charming and dignified at the same time."

"Okay, I have to admit that you've got me there."

"But what if the guard is a woman?"

"I didn't realize that your charm was much less effective on the feminine persuasion," Mal pointed out.

"What if it's a guy, but he likes the..."

"Come on, we don't have more time for hypotheticals," Mal said, putting a finger up to her full lips. "I've got to rendezvous with our Mister and Miz Maren, and you need to be bringing our ride around."

"Yeah," Inara agreed, and they crept out of the room. As they crept in the same direction down the corridor, she whispered, "Mal?"

"Yes?"

"If - if there are a lot of guards at the landing field, should I wait until the Santiago gets near before taking off?"

Mal hesitated, leading the way. "Use your judgment. Taking off in the middle of the night before there's anything to cover it could be dangerous, not to mention having to get _to_ the ship before you even take off. But so could flying through whatever's going to happen when Santiago arrives." He snapped his fingers, but silently. "_That's_ what Kaylee was going to take care of," he said in a whisper. "She had something to distract guards at the landing field."

"Hmm." Inara considered. "I can't go all the way to the rendezvous point with you and double back. Don't you have anything that might help out that you don't need?"

Mal checked in a few pockets. "Just this," he said, handing a slim red rocket, maybe seven and a half inches, over to her. "It's this or nothing."

"Oh, Buddha in a bucket," Inara complained. After a moment, they got to the intersection where their paths split. "You go ahead," she said. "I'll wait long enough for you to be out of sight, and the camera to reset. Then when I come around the corner it'll look normal."

"But that camera will suddenly pick you up first," Mal said, pointing at one vaguely behind her.

Inara held out a hand, and after a moment, Mal gave her a digital controller. She took only a few seconds to make an adjustment. "Not anymore. It'll stay on the bypass for an extra two minutes."

"Okay, good luck." Mal took the controller back, hesitated for a moment, and then hurried away without a backward glance.

#

"I'm coming as quickly as I can," Kaylee grumbled as she hurried along, next to Simon and about a pace and a half behind him. "When I was going to meet with Inara, I'd planned the timing of **that** route to take into account the difficulty of moving in a tight dress and heels. This is just what we get for last-minute changes."

"We're not more than a few seconds behind," Simon muttered. "And Mal said that we'd probably have time that we'd need to wait once we got past the rendezvous anyway. I can adjust the camera blanking schedule, and he'll wait for us if we're a bit late."

"Well, yeah, if we need to," Kaylee agreed, and obviously tried to hurry the pace.

"Just don't fall and hurt yourself," Simon said, sounding a bit worried. "That, above all, we don't need."

He was also a bit worried about what might happen if they met someone still out and about in the hallways, whether they were security, household staff, or what. Well, other guests probably wouldn't be a problem. They'd talked it over, and decided that staying in formalwear probably would seem less threatening, and thus less suspicious, even though the night's social engagements had pretty much broken apart nearly an hour ago. Simon led the way to a flight of stairs, (since an elevator going from place to place with no security footage of anyone inside would probably by noticed as strange,) and they lost more time as Kaylee climbed to the next level up. Without saying a word, Simon readjusted the camera blackout sequence to give them another thirty seconds along their whole route.

"Simon, can I ask you something?" she asked in a panting whisper, as they approached within three turnings of the rendezvous.

"Umm - yeah, why? I mean, what is it?"

"How long do you think that River is going to be the number one priority in your life?"

That subject startled Simon, to the point that he very nearly stumbled and collapsed headlong on the floor himself. "Umm, I don't really have any idea. As long as she **needs** me to be, why?"

Kaylee reached out automatically to help him straighten up, but even in the dim light he could see the upset and disappointed look on her face. For a moment he wished that he hadn't been so abrupt with her, but that hadn't been the biggest problem, it was the sentiment itself, which as much as he might want to, he couldn't disavow. Assuming that they didn't get killed/captured by rivals/arrested in the fulfillment of this caper, they would be heading back onto Serenity, which was the center of Kaylee's world after all, and the only home that Simon could return safely to at the moment.

But with Serenity, River would come back into his life - he loved her and wouldn't leave her side for anything, obviously, but it was clear that Kaylee sensed that devotion, and wasn't eager about playing second fiddle to little sister in his life, even if they could work out every other issue. This little side trip was probably the only chance that they'd had to indulge without River getting in the way - and Simon had let the mission itself keep him from doing what he so badly wanted to do. And now, certainly, it was too late to even consider...

"Move your butt!" Kaylee insisted in a whisper, and Simon realized that he hadn't automatically started moving, as he ruminated. They were in danger of losing the whole security coverage pattern, and the meeting with Mal - and it was just possible that a human guard, either estate security or Alliance Fed soldier, would happen along. He scurried into as much of a jog as he could manage without making loud footsteps. Even so, Kaylee shushed him silently, urging him with a tug on his arm to slow down.

Nothing more was said for the rest of the hallway and another staircase, and suddenly a tall figure was approaching them. Simon almost panicked before he forced his brain to check for Mal's face, and of course, it was indeed Serenity's captain, no-one other. "Inara should be out to the landing field," Mal muttered by way of greeting. "Not sure if she's going to wait for..."

And at that moment, a shock wave of sound and vibration passed through the chamber where they'd met - Kaylee yelped quietly and lost her balance, toppling over at an angle between forwards and right - Simon tried to scramble around quickly enough to catch her when she fell, but he wasn't able to keep his own balance while moving that quickly and the tremors in the floor hadn't half subsided. As he stumbled, his face more or less collided with Kaylee's cleavage, (by accident, **seriously!**) and the two of them ended up in a somewhat tangled heap, Kaylee breaking Simon's fall and sounding extremely unimpressed by that detail, as he could hardly blame her. He _hadn't_ planned his manoeuvre to go that way, but then, things often just didn't...

"Are the two of you finished wrestling around?" Mal drawled crisply, and Simon scrambled to his feet, and then offered a hand to Kaylee, but she pointedly refused it and arranged herself into a demure kneeling position by herself. Mal hefted her the rest of the way up. "I guess that's our diversion, just in time," Mal deadpanned, looking around the room. "Things should be busy enough in security central."

"Is - is the main mansion hit?" Simon muttered, worried, as Mal led them across the room. "That felt..."

"Nah, probably wasn't even one of the outbuildings," Mal judged casually, his voice supremely offhand. "Just a warning shot, as it were, but the noise and the blast wave can be powerfully distracting, I do realize that." He bent over next to the blank wall, pulled out some kind of a little pliers-like tool out of an inside pocket, and drew open a three-foot wide panel in the metal base board. "Okay, here's our pathway into the south wing, I do reckon."

"What - what's in there?" Simon muttered. The portal didn't look hardly big enough to - well, if they went in flat on their stomachs, sliding like snakes, there would probably be just room enough, even for a big and broad guy like Mal. But how small would whatever passage inside be, and how dark, and would there be twists and turns that they couldn't navigate through?"

"Service passageway for the household robots," Kaylee muttered. "Pretty standard - didn't you have any of these at home?"

"We, we had household robots at my parents' place, but no little tunnels or cubbyholes for them," Simon muttered, torn between dismay and fascination. "Possibly because it was an old historical house dating to the first settlement of Osiris, supposedly, so maybe consumer automation wasn't so common back then. And in my own apartment - well, I had regular cleaning service, people and machines coming in to take care of whatever, but no regular robots." Somehow the explanation was making him feel a bit better about the whole deal. "How big is the passage inside?"

"Enough talking," Mal insisted. "Except to sort out who's leading the way."

"I'll take up the rear," Kaylee insisted. Both of the men turned to look at her. "Sorry - in this getup, I'd rather that you weren't gaze fixed forward on my ass - at least, not in a 'serious situation' at least."

"Maybe I'd better go first, then." Simon said, taking a deep breath. "Better that than being stuck in the middle. I... I don't do too well with very tight spaces anyway."

"You don't do well with tight spaces," Mal muttered, handing Simon a palm light. "You don't do so well with the big outer spaces either, I seem ta recall."

"So I prefer a happy medium to either extreme," Simon quipped, and began to crawl into the access hole, hoping that this would work out okay. He swung the little light from the small emitter around and back by turning his hand one way and then another, trying to get a sense of the space and where they had to go. He'd hoped that they might be able to go straight through to their destination, but unfortunately encountered a T-intersection almost immediately - the passageway wasn't leading away from the room that they'd been in, perpendicular to the wall, but ran behind the wall and parallel to it. There would be just about enough room to make the turn, but... "Which way is south?"

"Turn right, Simon," Kaylee called helpfully, and Simon flexed his body around in that way, wondering if Kaylee was gaze fixed on any part of him as he contorted. (It was almost too bad that Mal would be in between them... but then, unless there were more flash lights, then Kaylee wouldn't be seeing that much of anybody's butt, or anything else. (Which made him wonder just why she was so insistent about going last...)

"There a problem - Doctor?" Oh, right. Simon had gotten so caught up in irrelevant thoughts, that he'd stopped crawling with his calves and feet still poking out of the hole. Quickly he rearranged the flash onto the back of his hand so that he could get up onto his hands and feet, without having the light pointing down at the floor, (though having it shine up at his face was a danger from that position,) and made as much progress as he could. After around twenty seconds, he risked a look back, and saw that Mal was still managing the contortion of following him. That made him feel a bit better.

He'd seen this sort of thing on network videos, the brave heroes or clever criminals scurrying through ventilation ducts or what-have-you, (there might have even been a few that mentioned robot passageways,) but none of them managed to convey just how frustrating, tiring, and awkward it was to travel through something this small. At least it was a bit higher than the access door had been, Simon admitted, and they hadn't yet encountered a robot who wanted to come the other way.

"Um, a moment of your time, Mister Tam?" Mal called quietly from behind him.

"Yes?"

"I do believe that you've nearly passed by the side passage that we'll need to take to get out of here in an appropriate spot."

"Huh?" Simon let his fingers run across the sides of the passage, and realized that there was indeed a noticeable hole to his side - one that was even shorter and a bit narrower than the tunnel he was currently crawling through. Oh boy. He backed up, (Mal hadn't been following so closely as to make this awkward,) and then managed to climb up into this new conduit of torture. This time, the hands and feet deal was right out, and he had to hump the length of his body into progress as quietly as he could, feeling like an exceptionally awkward snake, since there was really nothing that he could grab onto with enough leverage to slide forward with. "Do I need to watch out for any other turnings?" he called.

"No, in twenty more feet we should be at what seems like a dead end," Mal reported. "Just push on it when you get to it, and it should open up alright from inside."

"Push straight ahead of me?" Simon confirmed, and took the lack of words that came back to him as a 'yes.' Well, twenty feet more he could do - he found the metal plate barring the way in front of him, prodded, and was surprised as the surface fell away entirely. With a desperate grab, he was able to get a hold of the panel so that it didn't fall onto the floor of the room that they had been making towards, which could have generated too much noise.

He helped Mal and Kaylee out of the passage. Nobody talked, or made noise that they could help, because they heard heavy breathing, and muted voices, from not too far away. What did it mean that there were people so nearby? Had extra security been dispatched onto the spot, or were they scientists who had been working late, and emerged from the lab because of the sound of weapons fire? That din hadn't stopped, though Simon hadn't been particularly aware of any impacts during the crawling tribulation - in fact, a little passageway like that was possibly the best place to be while the whole building was shaking.

"Mm?" Mal gestured in front of Simon's face, but he wasn't sure what the captain wanted, so just cocked his head, Choking down a snarl of frustration, Mal retrieved the light from Simon's hand, adjusted it to the dimmest setting, and crept across the small room, gesturing for Simon to follow. There was a rack full of clothes hangers on one side of the chamber - and on each hanger seemed to be an identical set of jacket, shirt, and pants, except for certain variations in size. A set of uniforms capable of serving dozens of men, then, and - had he seen an outfit like that before? It was so hard to judge colors, in the dim light, but...

Mal thrust a uniform at Simon to try, and he spared only a moment's glance at Kaylee before taking off the fancy party gear that he'd been wearing up until now. Kaylee just smiled teasingly. By the time he'd gotten the shirt on, and the pants, he had a notion who they were dressing up as, though it was still hard to be sure of the effect without adequate lighting, and a mirror. Something in the manner that Mal assumed once he had his own jacket on sealed the issue - the game was pretending to be internal security for the mansion.

When Mal confidently led the way out of the uniform room, Simon had to nerve himself up to follow, especially when he saw the Alliance soldiers with face masks down and automatic rifles pointed in two different directions - and one of them quickly spotted them and flipped around to cover Mal and Simon, muttering new curses under his breath. The other guard noticed what had happened, and switched to cover the northward corridor that his friend had abandoned - which was presumably the main entrance where people might enter from the big house. "State your identity numbers and names, please."

"Jeffer Grant, eight seven three one two four nine oh," Mal rhymed off, and Simon's mind froze as he saw one of the Feds punch that into a computer keypad on the back of his weapon. Mal turned to Simon. "Riggs? Oh, hell, Riggs, did you forget your number again? I keep telling you, you have to at least make an effort to..."

To Simon's silent amazement, one of the Federales smirked. "Your friend not so good with his numbers?"

Without even looking back at Mal, Simon realized what he'd have to do to sell this role, as humiliating as it might be. (The indignities of being under cover, or something like that.) "Hey, I can count up my pay and my bills just fine. Just - just not used to this 'Serial number' niou-se."

Both federales chuckled at that, and Mal joined in, but the one who had his gun trained in their direction worked his keypad. "Mister Simeon Riggs, from Regina. Did you get much of the sickness, before leaving your world, Riggs?"

The sickness? Suddenly Mal remembered the medicine that Mal had stolen, and given back, and what he'd said about it. "No - never did go near a mining town, though I guess I'm lucky even so. Was eager enough to find work that would take me off that world - always been good with a gun or a knife in my hands, so..."

"Speaking of which, where's your armament?" the other guy put in, sounding suspicious. Mal had produced a small pistol to hand in his right hand, with the light turned off in his left, but of course, Simon had never owned a gun, and hadn't thought of taking a scalpel to this mission, especially as Rickard Maren wasn't a medical man. Then again, there was the...Mal turned to glare at him. Had there been guns in the room, that he'd been supposed to take one of, as well?

"There's no time for that now," Mal blurted out. "There's signal jamming here and there, so you that explains why you didn't get the message. Wilson Swann ordered the two of you off to the West doors, one floor down. There were bandits spotted on the internal cameras."

"The hell," Mister suspicious breathed. "Probably they've hacked into the overbuilt computer security system, and put in fake images."

"Maybe," the other Federale said, "but we've got to go check it out. The two of you holding our position here?"

"No, we'll be posting our guard closer to the labs," Simon told him. "That's where somebody thinks they'll be going - after the engine prototype."

"Yeah, figures."

"Don't worry about Riggs here," Mal said. "He's got a mean Outback knife, if he can remember which boot he stuck it in, and used to train in Stalking Crane Kung Fu." With that, the Alliance soldiers turned to move off - and then the canny one turned back. "There isn't a door one level down - we're two floors above the ground here."

"The spot right above the door," Mal corrected. "Because they'll head up at least one floor first thing."

Simon wished that he really did have a mean Outback knife in one of his shoes, (he didn't have decent boots on at all, just the black dress shoes,) because he was certain that with that little bit of revisionism, the jig was really up. But somehow even the cynical guard managed to swallow Mal's story whole.

"How did you do that?" Simon whispered, as Mal jogged back to where they'd left Kaylee.

"Wasn't hard," Mal muttered. "I took advantage of our computer access to memorize a few names and numbers, especially the commander of the Alliance guard contingent, which is always a magic word with soldiers of any kind. Trust me, I know. The rest was all bluff, as you might have noticed."

"Yeah," Simon agreed, just thankful that it had worked by this point. Kaylee was nowhere to be found in the uniform room, so Mal brushed past Simon and headed another way through the hallways of the South Wing - trying to meet up with her on the way to the experimental fusion lab, Simon realized.

#

"Okay, it's now or never," Inara whispered to herself, as guardsmen began rushing out to some of the ships in the landing field. There was no great commonality of style or design in the three ships that had already lifted off to challenge the Firefly-class ship that had been circling around the mansion, so Inara guessed that the Alliance guards had not prepared by bringing armed air vehicles to the conference, (or had been unable to get the request for them approved,) and were simply commandeering guest transport in the hopes of finding something that could take a head-on collision with the attacker without being totalled. Or maybe that wasn't even a requirement. Were these soldiers actually willing to sacrifice their lives in such a situation?

At least nobody seemed to be venturing out to the edge of the landing field where her shuttle was parked, Inara realized as she stepped out, on the edges of the swarm of rushing people - not all soldiers, she realized, spotting a few actual guests who had already made it out of the mansion. With a gasp of surprise, Inara spotted a particular gravity sled rising into the air. Rickard and Juli Maren would really have a claim against Mal's potential profits if that was destroyed, Inara decided, but there was nothing that she could do about that at this point. She could only...

"Halt! What are you doing out here?" a soldier demanded, pointing a snubby mini-machine-gun at her.

"I'm getting the hell out because we're under attack!" she screamed back at him.

"Show me your information and ID card first," the guard barked. "Do it now, or you're under arrest as an accessory to grand theft."

"I didn't have those when I left my room!" Inara wailed, pouring on as much distress as she could. (So much for maintaining dignity.) Actually, she did have both of them, but if she showed her invitation, it would show that she hadn't been invited alone, and she didn't want to answer any questions about where her client was just at this moment.

"Hey, buddy, don't hassle any of us," another guest, one of the theoretical chemists, said, and pointed up into the air. "Save that for the gorram bandits!"

If you only knew, Inara said silently to the man, as she took advantage of the distraction to hurry past and duck behind a still-parked vehicle. She was just as much of a bandit here as the crew of... was it 'Santiago'? Just being a bit more subtle and clever about it.

The rest of her trip to the shuttle was relatively uneventful, and Inara was just about to start the takeoff sequence before she reconsidered. The alliance guards would be paying some attention to anything that seemed seriously out of place, and if she took off, then landed near the south end, close to one of the entrances, that would definitely qualify. She couldn't fail to show up to pick up her friends, but she could be smart about it. Even if somebody had noticed her coming on board, it wouldn't be that unexpected for the shuttle to remain in place - she might be too afraid to take off with airborne chases going on overhead. So... she rushed back to the door, to lock and secure it, and then pulled out her signal pen which was connected to Mal's on the probably-untraceable frequency. 'Query', she signalled, hoping that he would figure out what she was asking. And then she waited.

#

Kaylee paused just a moment and turned around when she heard footsteps approaching - but it was Mal, and Simon dithering along in his wake, so that was okay. Good thing that they'd shown up at this point, actually, because she knew that she was in the vicinity of the right lab and hadn't been quite sure which one it was and how to get to it. It would definitely have been a bad deal to miss rendezvousing with the guys because she'd gotten lost looking for the right doorway.

Mal just hurried right on past her, looking to his side every now and then, though he probably couldn't catch more than a glimpse of Simon that way because the doctor was a few paces back. Still, Kaylee thought she knew what was on Mal's mind - he thought that he knew the way, but couldn't be sure, because Simon was the only one who had actually gone there. But he didn't want to hang back and let Simon lead the way either, for whatever reason, so was keeping his senses alert for any sign that he was going the wrong way.

It didn't come until the last moment. Mal headed past a doorway, his eyes intent on the next one in that corridor, but Simon stopped and tapped meaningfully at the place designated L6. As Mal turned around to come back, Kaylee took this as her own cue, pulling out a little electronic multi-tester and circuit flasher out of her hip pocket and considering the card reader on the door.

Simon already had access to this place, so they didn't need to worry about that. At least, he'd had access in the past, though it was somewhat hard to say if that was blanket permission, access only at certain times of the day, or specific pre-approved windows. That part didn't really matter too much anyway. If need be, Kaylee could trick the system into thinking that some prior access condition was still valid. On a truly great system that might be beyond her means, but from the specifications she'd already seen this mansion wasn't truly the bomb of security.

One detail was more important, and probably trickier - suppressing the notification that Simon had used his code to gain access here, so that neither a pattern matching system nor a human operator would sound the alarm because Rickard Maren was poking into the lab at a time when he shouldn't be. Once that notification had been cleared, Simon could try his ID bracelet, and Kaylee would be able to continue tweaking if that didn't get them inside the lab at once.

And before she could do anything else, she needed to open up the circuitry on the door without setting off the alarm for tampering. Hmm - yes, there was more to this than she thought.

Mal and Simon were both watching her. After just a moment, she had her plan. She fished for more tools, and handed a small razor blade and a steel skewer to Simon, and smiled at him. "Ready to operate, doctor?"

He blinked in surprise, and then whispered back. "I'm not used to assisting in somebody else's surgery. Tell me what to do."

"When I say go, jab the skewer down hard into the keypad, right between the two, three, five, and six keys. Then count off two seconds and..." Kaylee paused a moment, figuring out how to phrase it. "Up behind the top of the left side of the panel, there's a magnetically conductive cable that we're going to need to disconnect at just the right moment. I think the best bet is to slit the plastic insulation with the razor first, and then make a decisive stabbing motion through the opening that you've created, yes?"

"Um, okay," Simon muttered. "And what are you going to be doing?"

"Oh, nothing so hard," Kaylee admitted. "Just holding down four function keys at once for five seconds."

Simon considered that for a moment, and then switched the poker and the razor. "Okay, I'm ready."

"Are you sure, like that? You'll have to cross your arms."

"Yeah, I know," Simon admitted. "But I can't work the razor well enough with my left hand, I know that much."

"Alright." Kaylee hesitated, and then got her own fingers into position. "Go!" Simon jabbed, and she started holding down _Sup_, _Eff_, _Plus_, and _Go_. "-steamboat, two steamboat!" Simon got to work with the razor.

A few seconds later, the entire panel had popped out, letting Kaylee get to work on the electronic vitals further inside. Access the minor memory module, poll for override flags, flip a few bits. (Who would have thought her school classes in basic computing tech would have paid off like this?) Pump in some testing data while watching the network pipe. "Okay, Simon, we're hidden from central. Try your ID." He swished it over the door sensor, and very obligingly the portal swept open on both sides, letting them rush into the laboratory proper...

And stare at a man who was slumped over on a control console, not moving. For a second, Kaylee thought that he was dead, but even though she couldn't spot his back moving from breathing, (or any other part of him,) it wasn't hard to tell that a faint snoring sound was coming from his direction. Simon moved over a bit more closely, and nodded. The doors went _Fwoot_, closed, behind them, but from this side they could be opened just by tapping on a pressure button.

"How, how come he slept through the shaking and the noise from outside?" Kaylee asked wonderingly.

"Hard to say," Mal muttered. "Unfortunately, I don't think we can take the chance of just letting him sleep while we go on about our business here. If he **does** wake, and recognize that we're thieving, he's only inches away from sending a silent alarm to the security folks."

"So, what then?" Simon growled back. "Are you just going to plug 'im one?"

Mal scowled at the doctor. "Come on. You should know by well that I'm very loath to kill those that have not yet meant me any harm." He crept closer to the sleeping man, watching him, and tore a rough strip of fabric easily from the hem of his jacket. "Kaylee, you remember how to use this stuff, right?" He tossed her a very tiny little bundle of grey something.

"Hmm? Oh, um, yeah." Frowning a bit herself, Kaylee managed to extract a length of thin but strong cord from the knotted tangle, stretching it between her hands. "Go for the feet first?"

"Yah. Doctor, lend a hand if your conscience doesn't forbid." And with that, Mal was upon the sleeping figure, pulling him away from the console, tipping his chair back, fitting the torn off strip of cloth into his mouth as an impromptu gag, and tying it back at the base of the man's neck. Kaylee, meanwhile, did what she could to force the man's feet, (which he was trying to kick in panic,) together, and seal them together with the restraining wire. Getting his hands bound was a much tougher experience, but overall the whole thing didn't take much more than a minute. Simon did get involved once, when one of the captive's hands had seized on Kaylee's hair. Simon squeezed between the unfortunate soul's elbow and wrist until his grip let go.

"Alright, well enough," Mal said, looking around. "Surprisingly enough, I'd say that things went mostly smooth so far, and - and we've got the goods, that mess over there, right doctor?"

"Yes," Simon replied, making a bitter face. "We should be able to pack it up somewhat without resealing it in a moulded case - but it'll still be tricky to carry out between the three of us."

"I... I recognize this guy," Kaylee said, looking into the face of their unwanted captive. Mal had stuffed some extra fabric into his mouth in a ball-like wadge, to help muffle any wordless cries from deep in the throat he might try to let loose with. "Spoke with him the first night, and watched him in one of the morning panels. He... I can't remember the name, but he was from back home, on..."

"Girl!" Mal called out sternly. "Miz Maren. Don't even say it - he can still hear us, and he'll be able to talk once we're gone, eventually." Kaylee blinked, recognizing that if she had spoken the name of her home world, it might have helped the Alliance authorities trace this caper back to her, and thence to Serenity. "Is there anything in here that might help us move the engine? Somebody wants to know once we're on the move, I reckon." He held up a data pen, one of the ones that they'd been using to transmit signals.

"Hmm." Kaylee swept her eyes around the laboratory, which was quite well lit, compared to the hallways outside, (never mind the access tunnel,) and started to nod in pleasure. "Yeah, umm... we've got most of what I'll need for a jerry-rigged float lifter, using equilibrium force pointers to keep everything bundled together... except - oh, we'd need selenium matchers for the proper current adjustment..."

"Those the little stick-shaped things, about the same size and shape as an antique cigarette match?" Simon asked.

"I, umm, I have no idea what you mean." Simon used his fingers to indicate how long and how thin. "Yeah, that's about right - smooth surface and a sort of a light gray-green color?"

"Yep, that's them. There's a supply cupboard nearly right across the hall."

"Well, that's convenient," Kaylee quipped. "Go, fetch. Mal, make sure that he doesn't have to use the outside controls to get back in. Never can tell for sure."

"Alright." Mal smiled slightly and shook his head, patting Simon benevolently on the shoulder as they headed for the door. Kaylee finished gathering the rest of the parts that she would need, and began the basic assembly, realizing that they were racing the clock. "Huh, well, this is quite an unwelcome surprise," Mal said clearly from out in the hall, and Kaylee looked up in alarm. She was just in time to see Mal step through the door and let it close behind him.

"What was that?" she muttered to herself. Why would Mal have done that, when she had ordered him that-a-way specifically to keep the door open? What was the unwelcome surprise?

There was only one thing that she could think of. He'd met someone, somebody armed, out there. Possibly guards, but more likely... someone from the Santiago crew, also after the engine? Mal would have figured that to let them get into the lab right away would have been to lose their prize, so he'd sealed off the door, with himself outside. He'd have stayed inside if he could, without getting shot, wouldn't he?

And - and what was Kaylee to be doing now?


	9. Chapter 9

"No word from them?" Wash asked Zoe nervously.

"Nothing from Mal, or Kaylee, since they signalled that they were on the move from their assigned chambers," Zoe said, looking at Serenity's comm screen. "Inara sent a generic query signal through, but I pretty much had to assume that was for Mal, and he doesn't seem to have replied."

"I really don't like this," Wash muttered. "Jorge took his ship in. Why can't we?"

"If things start to look bad enough that there's nothing to lose by abandoning the plan... then we can try it," Zoe muttered. "For now - just have patience. Radio silence can be tough to take, especially if you're not seeing action yourself. We don't know. Things might be more or less on track."

"No, it's not going smooth," River said, in an odd imitation of Mal's speaking cadence and tonal patterns, though it wasn't really an imitation of the sound of his voice. "Why can things never go smooth?"

Zoe turned around to glare at River. "Doing that, it's not helpful."

"Okay, what about if I go down to the passenger's head and leave the hand dryer air blowers on all the way?" River countered.

"Still not the best idea I've ever heard in the 'Verse," Wash decided, "but if it would keep you out from underfoot, my vote is 'go for it.'"

"Nah, that wouldn't keep me engaged for long," River decided after a long, thoughtful moment. "You're stuck with me."

Wash sighed and checked the passive sensors again.

#

"Mal Reynolds," the muscular, well armed woman said in a despairing groan. "You didn't just do what I think you did?"

"You're a smart lady, Allena," Mal answered evenly. "If you think that I did something, then you're probably right."

"Trying to lock us out of the lab with the goods in it?" Allena bit back. She had very short, orange-golden hair, and bright hazel eyes that seemed magnified by her spectacles, which were strapped around her head with a black rubber band - presumably so that they wouldn't fall off in the midst of a rough-and-tumble when she'd need them the most. Mal didn't have that much firsthand knowledge of this 'lady' - she was a recent recruit to Jorge's crew, from Ariel, but he'd heard that the spectacles served two functions. One, she actually would need them to read something close up, since she'd never gotten contact lenses or eye surgery to correct a mild case of farsightedness. However, the glasses were also rigged to show her computer search results and sensor scans without occupying any space in her hands. At the moment, one of those hands held a sawed-off shotgun, and the other had a mini-trank dart thrower.

There were two other people in the corridor, aside from Allena, Mal himself, and Simon - one of them looked every inch a gunman - not any taller than Simon, and maybe skinnier, but carrying a piece almost as impressive as Vera, and also a nasty glint in his eye that said he was just itching for a chance to use the gun. The last man was skinny as well, and about as tall as Mal, and he couldn't quite get a read on this person. He had a gun and a knife on his belt, but hadn't made a move to grab either yet.

"That's exactly what I've done," Mal confirmed cheerily. "Unless the door you really want is one that was already locked, not the one that I just came out of..."

"I rather doubt that... we're both working off Badger's information, so you know how complete that is," Allena told him with a sneer. Mal honestly wasn't sure if the Badger files could have led him to this door, without Simon's experiences and their further inside research to help them out. "I was planning to simply blast our way in, but... hmm, interesting. You seem to have already compromised the entry panel." Allena considered, then holstered the shotgun on her back and tried pressing the 'open' feed on the mess of door circuits. Nothing happened, except...

Simon launched himself at Allena with a throaty roar. Mal tried to hold the doctor back, but wasn't in time to stop the mercenary woman from firing a dart into Simon's lower thigh. He stumbled and managed to catch himself against the wall, sinking to his one good knee. "Not a wise move, whoever you are," she snapped. "Okay. Terrin, the plastique?"

"You don't need that," Mal blurted out. "We've still got an ID key into that lab."

Allena stared dubiously at him. "Sorry, what? You expect me to believe that you'd make such a point of locking us out of the lab, and then helpfully point out that we can unlock it with your ID?"

"I... I didn't think it through," Mal told her. "No particular reason to force you into using an explosive." He smirked. "I don't really trust you to use it right, and neither of us wins if the engine gets damaged. Not to mention, I lose if **I** get damaged."

Allena's stare got even more intense. "I... I don't really think that you'd have worked some booby-trap or alert into your own code, but... but I do believe that you've got some sort of a plan up your sleeve, Reynolds. First off, hand my friend over here that piece." Mal hesitated, and then passed the gun to the tall man, who had been holding the explosive putty, and put it carefully away. Then Allena bent carefully over to examine the door controls. "These have been adjusted using a circuit flasher, and I can't tell to what extent - but why did you need to make adjustments if you have the access code?"

"We weren't sure that the code would work at night, or that it wouldn't flag a warning this late," Mal said, honestly enough. "So - so I cut off the communication with the central security computer."

"You did this... yourself?"

"Umm, no."

"Buddy over there?" Allena gestured at Simon.

"Yes," Mal lied as smoothly as he could. After poisoning Simon, she probably wouldn't try to interrogate him, and Mal needed to keep Kaylee's presence here a secret for as long as he could. "He's not bad with all that computer stuff."

"Why didn't he just cut the fibre cable?"

"I... I don't honestly know," Mal admitted.

"That might have been auto-detected," the short gunman said, and then mumbled something more quietly, almost like a nervous tic.

"It could indeed," Allena admitted. "Necoy, can you tell if the door circuit is really blocked from central?"

"I think so," he said, drawing out a circuit-flasher-multi-tester like Kaylee's, in the off hand from his gun. "Pump some sample data in, and watch the network line. Instament." Mal backed away slightly, at Allena's gesture, and stepped close to Simon. He'd noticed that the good doctor was fiddling with something in one of his pockets, and whatever was going on, if he could screen it from Allena's sharp eyes, that would be good.

It took maybe two minutes or more before 'Necoy' had confirmed what Kaylee had done inside the door security panel, which was time well earned in Mal's book. He hoped that Kaylee was investing it shrewdly. "Okay, yeah, we're good to go, Reynolds," Necoy finally decided. "Anotherly."

"Huh?" Mal asked. "Another what?"

"Don't pay attention to those words," Allena told him crossly. "He's got a kind of Tourette's."

"Where does he keep them?"

"Reynolds!"

"The turrets," Mal mumbled to himself, but he headed over to the door, offered his ID bracelet, and let Allena grab his hand and swipe his wrist near the door sensor. There was a moment's pause.

"Okay, why isn't it working, Reynolds?"

"Well - because it's not my ID that has access," Mal told her forthrightly. "I said that **we** still have an ID that would do it, not me."

"Gorram it, if you use a pretext to stall me one more time, then I will take a bit of that plastique, and dab it **under your chin** before setting it off," Allena swore, charging over to Simon and grabbing him by the left arm. For a moment Mal thought of trying to make a grab for Necoy's gun. He'd have done it if he thought that Simon had a fighting chance of taking out Allena, leaving just mister tall - or Terrin, if that was his name - for Mal to settle with. But no, it was a better bet by a wide margin to let them open the door, and see what Kaylee had been doing while she was waiting. She **had** to have understood what Mal was up to, and the lab was full of ingredients to someone with a mind like hers. But had there been enough time to get a recipe mixed up and baked?

Mal tried to back away from the door just enough, without being too far to help out if that was required. The door panel was lying on the floor about five feet away from where it had been fixed, and he gravitated towards that as the only likely weapon to have to hand. Necoy took Simon's bracelet - Allena must have ripped it away from his hand, and swiped it over the sensor. It took a moment, and then the door slowly slid back open. The three robbers from 'Santiago' exchanged looks, then Necoy and Terrin went inside to check the lab out, while Allena stepped closer to Mal, covering him with her gun. Uh-oh...

Mal was expecting it more than Allena when a huge roar of flame erupted from inside the lab, followed by shrieks and howls of pain, but though he was able to grab the panel and draw his wrist back, he didn't quite manage to make a decent throw before Allena shot him. The ripple of pain hit him first, but even as he tried to catch himself, he was thinking: 'Leg shot, well clear of the major arteries and veins. I'm almost insulted that she thinks this'll keep me entirely out of the action - but maybe she really doesn't want to kill me, yet. And I certainly won't be able to manage much, with this little liability, and no real weapons. And Simon's out of action, and Kaylee's spent her big surprise. It'll be all up to her now.'

He was not able to tell what happened inside the lab in the next minute, but Allena forced Kaylee outside at gunpoint, searching her roughly through the black dress, and yelling at her the whole time. "What the hell did you think that you were doing, you little bitch? Those were good men - Necoy is dying, and Terrin might not make it either. You're going to have to help me move the engine, you had some scheme up your sleeve before we showed up, didn't you? And then, I'll take you with me, and we'll see if Reynolds' people will negotiate for their prodigy engineer. No one's going to save you from me, little innocent one - both of your men-folk have been taken care of but good, and..."

"I... I wouldn't count on that," somebody stage-whispered just loud enough to be heard under Allena's rantings. She turned around - and suddenly got a scalpel embedded in her torso just below her collarbone, and Kaylee took advantage of the distraction to struggle free. At least, Mal thought for a moment that Allena was just distracted and Kaylee was struggling against the fierce mercenary woman, who would be determined to keep hold of her prisoner. Then he realized that Allena was collapsing in a heap, and the only struggling that Kaylee was doing was to not end up underneath the other woman.

"What, what's going on?" Mal muttered out loud, bemused. "That's such a small blade, and it didn't hit a vital point. How did that take her out?" Finally, unwillingly, Mal looked up to meet the gaze of the only person who could possibly explain what had happened to Allena - Simon Tam.

Simon was more alert than Mal would have thought, though he was using one hand to prop himself up against a wall. And there was a fierce little smile of triumph on his face. "She - she shouldn't have tried to use poison against a doctor," he muttered. "Just gave me... gave me ideas. Well, one idea, really, aside from antidoting myself, which - well, which I guess was just an obvious response to the sitch - situation."

"You kept your emergency kit under the guard's uniform?" Kaylee confirmed with a bright smile, and Simon nodded benignly. "Smart." Kaylee stepped up to favour her rescuer with a kiss on the cheek, then immediately returned to business. "I don't think all of this action was covered on the security cameras - we have distractions and diversions aplenty, especially courtesy of 'Santiago', but still - considering how valuable that engine is, somebody will be checking on the lab soon. We'd better git. And I'm the only one who's in decent shape?"

"You've got me beat for health, but not by an order of magnitude," Simon insisted. "And Mal - I want to check that bullet hole..."

"Not until we're safely in the shuttle, doctor - _with_ our loot," Mal insisted, and followed Kaylee into the lab. This time, the door had been fixed open somehow, and they all saw the two fallen mercenaries in the area near the doorway.

"I... I don't think that they're either of them as badly hurt as Allena said," Kaylee insisted doggedly. "Especially not if Fed coppers catch them. They do give prisoners good medical care, right?"

"Usually, yes," Simon assured her, and Mal kept quiet, knowing that while that wasn't a complete lie, the truth was more complicated. "We do need to leave them to the security forces. Ehm, what about the floater rig?"

"Well, I was **rudely** interrupted in the middle of fixin' that up," Kaylee pointed out. "But it shouldn't take too long to arrange, even so."

"Good enough," Mal told her - or grunted, more like. "Minutes are in short supply here."

"Don't I know it," Kaylee said, grabbing some field emitters and a stretch of power cable.

#

"Did you say 'Santiago?'?" Jayne whispered to Book, his entire face drawing down into an angry frown. "Oh, no, that's bad news. Mal's already captured or being tortured or something, I know it for sure. This information is hours old by now, isn't it?"

"Yes, I'm afraid it is," Book said, taking the huge mercenary's arm in a gentle and reassuring way and leading him around the Maren's cottage. "But what makes you so sure that... that the caper has gone so badly south? Malcolm has faced great odds before and triumphed over them. He's a very resourceful man, and an inspiring leader. Whoever Santiago is, can he really be able to stand so surely against that?"

"First off, Santiago isn't a 'he,'" Jayne told the preacher in a witheringly superior tone. "It's... well, it's another ship. A firefly-class like ours, and the Santiago crew is... is one of the meanest band of bandits on this side of Londinium."

"Which side?" Book asked, curious. "I, I mean it doesn't matter, but - if you mean a literal 'side' as in a direction in space, then no planet remains on the same side of another, in the Verse, forever. That's the nature of planets orbiting in a stellar system. And if you mean in terms of the far extreme distances of the system being one 'side' and the deep inner core being the other, then this side of Londinium includes most of the Alliance, as well as the lawless regions beyond... and I suppose perhaps that's the way you intended to put it. Never mind. They're capable criminals, then? Do you have any names?"

"Huh, would I have names?" Jayne chuckled. "Yeah, but you wouldn't know folk like that, Shepherd, now would ya? The thing is, they're not just capable, the Santiago crew are..." Jayne and Wash turned around a corner then to another side of the house, and realized that Rickard and Juli were both sitting out on a sort of a back deck, in wooden armchairs - she was presumably looking at him, and he was looking at the two intruders. As soon as Jayne stopped ranting, Book could hear the faint sound of insects and birds out in the nearby forest. With these kind of acoustics, he had no doubt that the scientists had been able to hear every word that they'd been saying when they got out of the building to 'avoid being overheard'. Right. "Well, hump me for a **da-goo yang**..."

"Please, I'd rather not," Rickard said, with a very self-deprecating and civilized sort of a smile. "In fact, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but this secrecy is almost starting to verge on the ludicrous. You've said nothing that compromises yourself or your own crew-mates, and we'd already deduced that your primary vessel was Firefly-class. As the example of this 'Santiago' makes somewhat more clear, there must be hundreds of parties, many of dubious repute, who have taken to traveling from world to world in exactly such ships looking for work, so the information would be of almost no use in tracking you down." He sighed. "Please. I'm as concerned as you are, though I'm not sure why, and... And I'd like to at least know as much as you do about the danger to your friends."

"'Friends' is pushing it somewhat, and if you want to know more, then... then I'm afraid I have one thing that I really do need to settle out first," Jayne said, walking around and leaning against the wall of the building with sudden resolution in his face. "Juli - did you really drug my coffee when I was on night watch? And why?"

Book groaned to himself. Wasn't it just like Jayne to ask something like that straight out, heedless of the consequences of the forces that he was invoking? But subtleties of the relationship between Juli and Rickard aside, (and Jayne had never really been much of a one for subtleties,) he was right, that they needed to understand Juli's motivations before telling her any more, no matter how tangential it seemed. That fact that they had been keeping from Rickard, out of sensitivity for his marriage, had been the justification for what he considered ludicrous secrecy.

"Drugging you?" Rickard exclaimed first, beating his better half to a reply. "Why, the very suggestion is preposterous, and if you do not withdraw that... that insinuation against my **wife** this moment, then I'm afraid I'll be forced to challenge you..." He had risen to his feet to this point, and would look somewhat threatening if Jayne weren't so much taller and brawnier...

"Challenge me?" Jayne roared with laughter. "To what, a trivia contest?"

"Rickard, don't try to defend my honour," Juli said softly, and somehow her quiet tones immediately commanded Book and Rickard's attention. Jayne was lost in his own jokes and made a few other jibes at Rickard before he realized that things had changed. "It's rather pointless at this particular point in the sequence of events."

Rickard paled slightly, and tried to back into his chair - without success, and ended up sprawled on the white paving stones. Juli hurried over to help him up. "You - you really did - what, slip him some of your experimental compounds?"

"Potassium pentothal," she explained simply. "It's nothing original to me - something that I was using on the white rats as a sedative, back when I was working on... well, you know. On larger mammals, it can lead to suggestibility and honesty as well as soporiphics."

"And what did you ask me, when you knew that I'd be honest?" Jayne roared. "Did you try some post-hypnotic tricks, as well? _why_?"

"No," Juli retorted, turning to Jayne, her eyes fierce in the planet-shine and starlight. "If I'd really hypnotized you, you'd probably have noticed something remarkable enough to seem unusual about your behaviour since. I'm not that good at it, and not patient enough to leave a trigger that would last for days without being reinforced." Her face quirked slightly. "I admit, I did think of a few irresistible seductress scenarios that were - interesting, but I guess I wasn't feeling quite certain enough to cross the lines that would be involved there. Also, I knew that I didn't have much influence over your friend, so if he happened to figure it out - well, which I guess he did even after I used my self-restraint."

"There's a question that our guest asked and you haven't answered," Rickard said pointedly. "Two actually. What did you ask him while he was under the influence, and why?"

"All kinds of things, okay?" She asked. "I shouldn't tell you all of it, because... because it _will_ tend to incriminate them. But that's okay, because when the Alliance police come to look for Rickard and Juli Maren, to ask them about what happened at the conference - I won't be here to answer questions. You can stay or go too as you wish - in fact, if you want to come with me, I... I'd still like that. But - but I won't be going back to a laboratory in the Core like we came from, or another hermit's house like this one. Not sure where I will go, or what I'll do, but - but I can't take any more of this isolation from the rest of the 'verse." She took an unsteady breath, her eyes fixed on Rickard, and Book wasn't sure, but he thought she might be starting to cry. "Not even all my love for you could keep me here, not any longer."

Rickard blinked, then he reached up to stroke her cheek - looked away to Book and Jayne as if resenting the fact that they were observing this moment in his life, but Book wasn't about to move, not without one of the Marens making much more of a fuss about it at least, and Rickard didn't make any particular fuss. "Why... why didn't you tell me like this, that you were so unhappy with the life that we'd made here?" he said so softly. "I mean, well, I'd realized that you were feeling restless, and... and-" He melted into a rich, throaty laugh that had a hint of something dark at the bottom of it. "I'd been thinking of saying something about that to you, about how much time you'd been spending hiking and taking such frequent trips to town, and if you wanted to go somewhere a bit further afield with me come the summer. If - if I'd been too late, if I woke up one morning and you just never came back... how could I have been so foolish as to keep putting it off?"

Juli smiled slightly. "So - so you want to come along?"

"Yes. We'll do it right - pack up everything we need, activate the strongest security setting, and message an estate agent about selling the property - if that's okay." She nodded. "I even have an idea about where to go, somewhere a bit more exciting, where legal issues won't prove much of an issue. There's a short man on Persephone, who's been interested in our work. Calls himself Bushpig or Baboon or something like that..."

"_Badger_!" Jayne exploded. "We bent ourselves over backwards trying to keep our lives a secret from you, and now that it's all over you just take over and go to work for Badger in secret?"

Rickard turned very slowly and stared at Jayne for a while before speaking. "You have a connection of your own to the gentleman in question?"

"Badger is no gentleman, I'd say," Book put in. "However, it is on his commission that we have come here - to steal an unsealed prototype Baty engine and deliver it to him to experiment on, and see if he can replicate it and subvert the Alliance government monopoly."

"So if we go to this Badger fellow, he'll probably put you to work on that, my heart," Juli said with a sigh. "I'm not sure I find that any more appealing than staying here - Persephone is a world under Alliance law, even if the criminal underbelly is notorious. If this Badger is protecting us, wouldn't that mean keeping us in isolation, no matter how crowded the surroundings are?"

"I suspect it doesn't have to be that way," Book said. "Badger would be capable of providing you new ID documentation, with which you can start over and make new lives in Eavesdown."

"And if that isn't enough for you, then we'll look for something else," Rickard promised. "All I ever really wanted was to make you happy - and if I've gotten too set in my ways to see that you weren't, then I deeply apologize." He turned back to see Book and Jayne still watching, and returned to his seat, pulling Juli playfully onto his lap - and she went without any objection. "Does this satisfy your concerns about the secrecy, and Juli's actions?"

Jayne just shrugged, and Book considered silently to himself for a long moment. He was still a bit disquieted by the evidence of Juli's deviousness, but she hadn't given any real cause to suspect that she would betray the Firefly crew, and if she intended to be far away from Alliance law, not even giving a statement to deny involvement in this heist, then certain details could indeed be discussed further. Rickard was a slightly different case - he would only be leaving to be with his wife, and if they had some further disagreement, they might separate and he might try to return to his quiet life here - but he would be drawing suspicion on himself by leaving at this point, and even telling the story about the impostors wouldn't easily free him from that taint. Hopefully he was street-smart enough to realize it. "Yes, I suppose, for the moment. What else do you want to know about?"

"The Santiago and her crew," Juli asked eagerly, her eyes wide.

Book shrugged and gestured to Jayne. "Very serious bunch of scofflaws, definitely. The boss of the gang, Jorge Vasquez, is an accomplished pilot, though he doesn't always fly 'Santiago' himself, and a great criminal mind. Not as great with the inspiring people skills as some that I could mention, but being good with his eyes and an eight-shooter helps to cover up for that lack. Then there's Allena, his new number two, the right-hand woman. Cold as ice and strong as... well, as something pretty strong. What're those big-ass he cows called?"

"Strong as a bull?" Juli asked, trying to stifle a giggle.

"Yah, that'll do."

"What about support staff on the ship?" Book asked quietly. "Ever heard about the non-muscle people working for him?"

"Hmm... can't say that I have, but he probably does have some." Jayne shook his head. "There was a mechanic, a short 'Riental type guy, that I saw when I actually made a tryout to work for Jorge on the Santiago. That was maybe two years back, and he told me that he had enough dumb muscle. Vreh." Jayne spat into the crack between four of the paving stones. "I really don't like that his people are messed up in this, though."

"Still, I think there's a good chance that it'll end okay," Book said calmly. "Unfortunately, we can do little but wait and see, from here."

#

Under Kaylee's direction, the break-in party had managed to get to the exterior doors before encountering more problems. Simon was very glad that Mal had made the change in plans to bring her along instead of sending her off with Inara - they'd have been in trouble several ways without her, probably captured by Allena and unable to stop her from getting the engine.

But whatever distractions and diversions Kaylee's programming and the Santiago crew had provided, they hadn't stopped some clever boy, (or girl, or possibly an automated circuit in the computer system,) from locking down the entire sector of external doors to the building. Simon almost got a severe electrical shock from the door handle, but Kaylee spotted the little red danger light just in time - he brushed his hand close enough to get slightly buzzed after she shouted a warning to him, but nothing more than an annoyance, as it turned out.

"Just let me get the signal pen, and talk to Inara," Mal mumbled. "She can blow the door in."

"You're delirious," Simon diagnosed. "First, I don't think there's a prearranged signal for 'blow the door in.' Second, even if there were, what weaponry did you smuggle into the shuttle? Conference security swept every vehicle that landed, remember."

"Don't even encourage him, Simon," Kaylee suggested. "In fact, you take him -" She encouraged Simon to allow Mal to lean against him, and maybe check on the bandaging, "and this as well..." That was the levitator controls. "I'll see if I can do something about the doors..."

"No, come on." With only a little unsteadiness, Simon bent down to the little access panel with a twenty button keypad, little screen, a few larger buttons, and one data access port, into which he quickly inserted a pen. "I... I know that you're used to being Miz fix-it with anything involving machines or inanimate objec... with things that aren't living in the traditional sense. That's good, since usually, I'm not so good on anything _without_ a heartbeat." Kaylee tried to press past the floating engine, Mal, and Simon, but found herself blocked for the time being. "But - but I'm not entirely helpless when it comes to computer systems either, Kaylee my dear. Did just about grow up surrounded by them, after all, and I was coding systems before I even decided that I wanted to be a doctor." Now his fingers were fairly flying around the keypad, using multiple taps to enter commands in an alphabet that the system hadn't been originally conceived to handle. "Ash me... ask me what I'm doing."

"I, I'm not going to ask, just to satisfy your ego," Kaylee told him warningly.

"Well, then I'll tell you. I happen to be..."

"You're using backdoor codes and trying to access the system from here, without getting locked out. And doing well, too, but still, I wish that you'd move aside and let me get in there before you..."

"Before I mess up?" Simon exclaimed, not stopping what he was doing. "That's what you think of me, isn't it? Poor Simon, can't do anything without making a mess of it. I didn't make a mess out of Ariel, well, not entirely at least, and the problem with the police at Saint Lucy's was _not my fault_. I... I would be happy to let you take your turn if it weren't simply more convenient this way, and faster, which helps because we don't have the time to juggle around. There are a few things that I can do just as well as you can, Kaylee Frye." He tapped a few last buttons, and withdrew the data pen. "And one of them would be..." He reached out to push on the door handle, and yelped as it shocked him again, harder this time. "Son of a..." Simon whirled around to look at Kaylee, who was struggling with a stray chuckle. "Go ahead, say that you told me so," Simon grumped. "I... I mucked us up right and proper, didn't I?"

"No," Kaylee said, and managed to get close enough to kiss him, as Mal opened his eyes just enough to roll them. "I... I probably didn't give you enough credit, because you did enter every command and access every security code correctly."

"Then why didn't it _work_?"

"Because you weren't patient enough," Kaylee told him, "and the codes didn't take full effect until five seconds after you tried the door. Now, let's get a move on, before they realize what we've done and manage to lock it again."

"Right," Simon said, somewhat dazed by the kiss. He pushed the door handle a third and final time, and this time it did _not_ shock him and let him push it open. He hurried out of the building, for the first time in days actually, (not counting an inside patio garden on the fourth floor of the main building,) rushed towards the waiting shuttle - and got zapped in the butt by a powerful charge of invisible energy, collapsing onto the well-mown lawn.

"_Simon_!" Kaylee exclaimed. She almost rushed outside herself, but wasn't sure what she could do except get zapped herself. Was that the security forces - or someone that the Santiagos had left to cover their own retreat? (Kaylee knew that she shouldn't call them that, wouldn't like someone else calling her crew the Serenities, but still...) She wouldn't have expected anyone working for Jorge Vasquez to use a non-lethal force, but maybe they thought that it would be valuable in this circumstance.

Before Kaylee realized it, Mal was on the move, pushing past the floating engine, and past Kaylee herself, out the door, with his hand on his gun. Kaylee expected to see and hear him get zapped any moment, but didn't. Instead, she saw and heard Mal aim his gun, and fire - and there was no replying shot, even then.

There arguably wasn't any need for one after a few seconds, though, because Mal lost his balance and measured a good length of the lawn all by himself after that much stress and exertion after the hit that he'd taken. Kaylee waited just a few more seconds herself, and then decided to risk the door herself. If she got zapped - well, then, she'd worry about what happened after that when the stun wore off.

But there was nobody apparently around to shoot a zapper at her - one more fallen figure was on the mansion grounds, near another entrance - Mal's aim must have been true, and presumably it _had_ been a confederate of Allena and the others, if he (or she) had been alone. Inara was rushing out of the shuttle too, and Kaylee fumbled for the floater controls, knowing that they had to haul both of the men-folk inside _and_ get the loot on board, before the real Alliance coppers showed up. And hope that there was nobody ready to intercept the shuttle in the air.

As she remote-controlled the engine in through the cargo hatch, standing next to Simon so that she could do her best to lift him up as soon as that little chore was done, Kaylee noticed the Firefly ship sitting a little further away down the lawn, and she had to fight back the usual sensations of 'that's home' that the simple outline of such a vessel could still bring to her. That ship had to be 'Santiago', and it was not home to her, or anybody like her true family. It irritated her, actually, that such a bunch of scoundrels could live in a Firefly as well, could own her and fly her and keep her in good repair nearly as well as she took care of Serenity. The Alliance might not count that as a crime, but Kaylee couldn't agree with such an assessment, though she couldn't put into words why it offended her quite so much, so...

"Come on!" Inara said, and Kaylee realized that she'd been just standing there lost in thought, after the engine had been lost inside the cargo hatch. Mal was already gone - how had Inara managed to take him inside so fast, especially considering that she'd have wanted to take care with the gunshot wound. Was Inara Serra stronger than she seemed? "I'll take the shoulders and support his genius-ey head, if you take a hold of the ankles? Yeah, okay."

In only a minute and a half more, Simon was lying in one of the bunks to recover from his electrical jolt, and Inara was flying her shuttle up towards a stratospheric reunion with 'Serenity.' "One more good thing about this Jorge character barging in, is that they might figure that we were one of Santiago's shuttles," Inara pointed out. "There was only one docked when she landed - I'm not sure where they other might be."

"Nowhere that it'll cause us more problems, I hope," Kaylee said, though she actually felt the nervousness more than the hope."

"No, I don't think that we'll need to worry about it," Inara said evenly. "Oh, and Book said that there's some interesting news about your alter-egos, the real Rickard and Juli Maren."

"What now?" Kaylee exclaimed.

"You'd probably better be sitting down for this."

"Umm, look to your right."

"Hmm?" Inara spared one glance away from her flying. Kaylee had taken the co-pilot's seat immediately next to her, not touching any controls. "Oh, right, okay. Well, apparently Juli is tired of the hermit's life, so guess where hubby is suggesting that they go next?"

"I, I have no idea," Kaylee mumbled... and was fast asleep before Inara managed a reply.


	10. Chapter 10

"You know, to a certain extent, I can hardly believe it was that easy," Simon said later in the infirmary aboard Firefly. Technically, according to both ship's time and the local Bellerophon clock at the mansion it was the next day, but nobody had really gotten much sleep in the night, with the exception of Kaylee, who was still deeply in dreamland. Nobody had wanted to move her out of Inara's shuttle, especially Inara herself.

"She looks so cute, all dressed up in that fancy black evening gown, her hair done to the nines, and snoring so enthusiastically," Inara had commented, and even Simon had to agree.

"_Hey_!" Mal exclaimed, in response to Simon's comment, and Simon blushed, realizing how his remark might have sounded.

"Okay, yes, on one level I realize that this doesn't qualify as easy, even though as gunshots go, it won't be a terribly tough one to recover from, especially if you listen to doctors' orders," he admitted, returning to his examination of the stitching that he'd performed on the shuttle, after recovering from the stun weapon and finding a medical kit that was in somewhat better shape than the one that Kaylee taken with them to Bellerophon for him to use in an emergency. "But still - I mean, there are a lot of complications that didn't arise, that might have. Do the feds still not even realize that we were there?"

"Not sure what they realize, I admit," Mal said, covering himself up somewhat since Simon wasn't telling him that he had to keep his newest developing scar, (a bit uncomfortably close to the crotch area,) available for further study. "Inara's presence there, at least, was on official record."

"Won't somebody ask her for a statement, then?"

"No." Mal smiled with satisfaction. "She relayed a message back about how she was taking herself, and her client, to safety because of the disturbance - she wouldn't have been the only guest to panic if that had really been her motivation, and probably most of them weren't even polite enough to say so. And it would be a rare and extremely bold lawman who would dare to contact a Registered Companion for help in a matter that didn't concern her much more closely, even to ask for voluntary help."

"Really?" Simon was surprised to hear that. "I knew that Companions are entitled to considerable privilege, especially in terms of any confidences shared by their clients, but still..."

"Inara assures me that it's so, and I believe her," Mal said. "She won't likely have to admit to the Guild what she's been up to either, though she may have to pay dues on any percentage share that comes her way."

"Ah, right," Simon said, backing away and taking a seat near the door of his domain. "For that, we'll need to deliver the goods to Badger, won't we? That means we're headed back to Persephone?" He did a double-take. "No, not before collecting Jayne and Book from Whittier..."

"Yes, of course we're headed there first," Mal agreed. "More than half-way there already, actually, if I know my pilot's skill." Simon nodded. "And no, we won't be heading all the way back to Persephone. Got business as will be taking us over towards Beaumonde - some freight to take on, and an appointment that Inara needs to keep. First, we rendezvous at Dixie Market Station, deliver the engine to some of Badger's best couriers, and stock up on a few supplies while we're there. I reckon that we'll also have passengers to take from Whittier to Dixie, and entrust to the courier's care, not that I like that part overmuch."

"The Marens?" Simon said, and Mal nodded. "Inara mentioned something about that, but..."

"Ain't really our business," Mal told him gruffly. "They made their own choice to leave and go to work for the Badge, and they need to get to Persephone without the Alliance knowing where they're going."

"And we need to get the engine there for similar reasons," Simon said, seeing it. "Well, it'll be interesting to see them again." He waited for an awkward moment. "Well, I guess that's it, sir. You can stay here if you feel like it, I suppose, or..."

"Oh, no, no." Mal quickly stood up. "Got captainly things to do. Um - just as soon as I change out of this stupid gown thingee and get my own clothes back on."

"Sure, sure," Simon said. With a smile on his face and a song in his step, he left the infirmary, going fore to the cargo bay - and found River waiting for him in the corridor. Neither of them said anything, but he embraced his little sister warmly, and proceeded with an arm around her narrow shoulders, while River smiled slowly herself and wrapped a hand around to the far side of Simon's waist.

Together like this, they proceeded across the cargo bay, up to the catwalk, and shared a glance. River nodded to Simon, so he went over to the door to Inara's shuttle, and knocked three times on the airlock door. He wasn't even sure if sound would get through the airlock, but after just a few seconds a familiar voice came back. "What is it? Who is it?"

"Umm, it's Simon, and nothing really important. I don't have to talk with you now if it's not a good time, but I just wanted to..."

"Simon? Umm, yeah - come in I guess. Please."

Simon worked the door controls to allow entry for himself, and stepped forward with his arm still around his little sister - but River twisted out of his grasp, stepping back, and solemnly shaking her head. Simon cocked his own head questioningly, and River responded with another gesture that somehow spoke volumes, in a non-verbal understanding that went all the way back to their childhood back on Osiris. 'Go ahead. You don't need me there. This is between you and Kaylee.' He wasn't quite sure which of those sentiments had really been in River's mind, and which he was reading into her movement of her head, but he did know that he had to go ahead and do this without her, so he nodded at River and headed inside.

"Oh, hey, you really are here," Kaylee said when she spotted him entering the main room of the shuttle. "Do - do you have any idea why I was in here?"

"You fell asleep as Inara reached nine hundred feet, she said," Simon told her. "Nobody wanted to disturb you - least of all me."

"Oh, okay. We - we got the engine out okay?"

"Yeah - it's still sitting in the shuttle's cargo hold, but it'll be safe enough in there," Simon assured her. "Everything inside it can stand up to vacuum and the cold if needs be. Apparently we're going to be handing it over to some couriers at Dixie Market Station."

"After all we went through?" Kaylee exclaimed, sounding a bit upset. "What if the couriers turn around and try to cut their own deal with Badger?"

"I don't know about that end of the business, really," Simon pointed out. "I think that they're working directly for Badger, not freelancers - and that he'd take a dim view of them trying to sell him goods that he's already bought and paid for. Or something like that."

"Okay," Kaylee said. "Where's Inara, anyway?"

"I'm not sure, actually. Maybe in the kitchen or something. Didn't see her after we docked."

"Then I should clear out; let her reclaim her space if she wants to." Kaylee got up, and smoothed the somewhat wrinkled dress down her body. "Guess I've got one more shindig outfit to add to my collection, at least."

"Yeah, but - well, I like the way you look in something simple and casual better, actually," Simon blurted out.

"You do, really?" Kaylee grinned back at him. "Listen, about what I said, and what we both said, back on Bellerophon..."

"We should take this a bit slow," Simon said. Kaylee's face seemed to react with two or three different reactions at the same time, including hope and disappointment. "It was a bit like a winter fling, the sort of emotions running high that can't last when you come back to the big city, or... well, do you know what I mean by that?"

"Summer love," Kaylee agreed. "Or that's what the term was back on my world. Guess the holiday schedules were different." Simon chuckled and nodded. "Okay, so - what were you thinking of for a slow restart?"

"We could do something together," Simon suggested. "At Dixie Market."

"Oooh, they're supposed to have an alien in a jar, that you pay to go in an' see!" Kaylee exclaimed. "Always wanted to take a peek."

"An alien in a jar?" Simon's face drew down in a frown. "Why, why would that be something fun to..."

"Well, it's in a dark and quiet room, and they only let a couple people in at a time," she said. "Zoe told me so. She an' Wash enjoyed it lots."

Kaylee stared in amazement as Simon's frown literally turned itself upside down. (It wasn't quite the same as an ordinary conversion from a frown to a grin, though she wasn't quite sure how. Faster than usual for one thing.) "Yes, come to think of it, I think that this alien is somebody we need to pay a visit to."

"I can't wait until we hit Dixie," Kaylee said, letting her fingers brush Simon's as they walked out towards her bunk.

#

(Almost a month later.)

"Gorram it," Mal muttered, stepping from the bunk hall into the dining room. Inara looked up at him, startled. "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to disturb..."

"No, that's okay," Inara replied softly. A lot had changed between them recently, but Inara did regret the loss of that sense she'd had of being one of the ship's regular company - and of being close to Mal without petty bickering getting in the way. But she couldn't afford to... "What's wrong?"

"I just heard back from Badger, about the Baty engine."

"Oh, right." It took just a moment for Inara to place that - she hadn't been thinking about it much recently, as other more immediate concerns developed on Serenity. Things like Mal finding an old war buddy dead in the Dixie Market post office, who turned out to be not-so-dead for a brief while, and bringing him home to Saint Albans - like helping Nandi's heart of gold stand against Burgess, finding out just how gifted little River was, and a very clever bounty hunter showing up to collect her. Also a few more usual appointments - and Inara working up the nerve to tell Mal that she had to leave the ship. She didn't **want** to leave the ship, but it seemed to be the only way out of... "Sorry. What did he have to say about..."

"They blew the damn thing up," Mal growled. "Along with a couple of buildings in a disreputable part of Eavesdown, the half-finished prototype copy engine, and most of their notes on how the thing worked. Badger said that he's under suspicion for arson on account of the explosion, and won't be able to do anything with the research that managed to get completed."

"Oh, brother," Inara said softly. "Umm, not meaning to sound too callous, but given that Badger is a devious criminal mastermind, do - do you have any way to check on what he's said?"

"Yeah, the thought crossed my mind that he's just trying to get out of paying me the share that he agreed to, but... I don't think so. We can't make it to Persephone anytime soon, but I have other friends and sources of info there, that Badger doesn't know about and can't lean on I hope. I've already got confirmation on Alliance news channels of the explosion and fire, though that might not be as Badger's representing them."

"Alright," Inara said. "Then, assuming for the moment that he's on the level... I'm sorry. If you feel like anything was my fault for the terms of the agreement that I helped you make with Badger..."

"No, not your fault," Mal assured her. "I was bent to hell on getting a cut of Badger's profits, and for that, I knew that he wouldn't also be giving away a lump sum. The way the business works. You go for a share of the big pot; you take on a share of the risk too. Badger's taken a big loss on the end of this caper - still assuming that he isn't trying to fool me - and we've taken a smaller one."

"I'm sorry for that," Inara repeated.

"Yeah." He took a deep breath. "On a brighter note, we're headed for Constance. Badger lined us up a bank job there, and believe it or not there might be a fence willing to take on the Lassiter. It'll be good to get the money in for that piece of diode. I've got an eye on this little hovercraft deal to replace the Mule we junked..."

"Constance?" Inara said, and sighed. "That's taking me further from where I need to be, Mal. I told you that I'm leaving."

"Yes - but I thought that there wasn't any big hurry."

"Maybe that's changed," she insisted. "I've accepted a position at a Companion training house on Paquin, and I need to get there... soon. Not quite sure how soon, but I want to hear how soon you could possibly get me there." Inara got up to leave, and Mal looked in the direction that she left, the usual blank confusion on his face.


End file.
